


Christmastime in the City

by SnitchesAndTalkers



Category: Fall Out Boy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Christmas, Falling In Love, M/M, Schmoop, Smut, bookshop au, holiday fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-23
Updated: 2019-12-23
Packaged: 2021-02-26 04:40:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 21,929
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21917722
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SnitchesAndTalkers/pseuds/SnitchesAndTalkers
Summary: After graduating from NYU, Patrick manages a bookshop in Greenwich Village. In the run up to the holiday season, he meets a customer with the most beautiful eyes...
Relationships: Patrick Stump/Pete Wentz
Comments: 44
Kudos: 170
Collections: Have Yourself Some Merry Little Peterick 2019





	Christmastime in the City

**Author's Note:**

  * For [the_chaotic_panda](https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_chaotic_panda/gifts).



> For Panda, who has listened to me whine about this, helped me out when I got stuck, and been the kind of wonderful, supportive cheerleader that every writer needs. I don't say it enough, but thank you. For being awesome all year round.

Patrick works in a bookshop. 

The shop is called Büx and it sits down a small side street in the Village. On the window it says _New York’s Largest Independent Bookshop,_ a statement that might well be true. Patrick has never checked. In his defence, the number of bookshops in the New York City area is obscene. Planning the route alone would take months. 

Büx has high ceilings and a squeaking spiral staircase with iron rods that leads to a wide wooden gallery. There are reading nooks with overstuffed armchairs and a cavernous backroom filled with used books and a fireplace that Patrick is convinced is responsible for the astronomical cost of their contents insurance. There is a book club, and a story club, and a writers club. It would be, Patrick thinks, the perfect place to work if it wasn’t for one fairly significant detail.

“Happy Holidays!”

Patrick narrows his eyes and reaches for his phone. The phone he shouldn’t have with him behind the cash register. But the name tag he _should_ have says ‘manager’ so there’s not a lot anyone can do about it. Happy holidays? The last time he checked it was November. But time is only a concept and there’s every possibility he stepped into a wormhole and lost a month somewhere between Baby Angst and Food Porn. 

Patrick looks at his phone. It’s still November.

“It’s November,” he says flatly. “Happy November.”

The customer blinks back at Patrick innocently. At least, Patrick thinks the blink is innocent. It’s hard to tell when the guy’s whole face is covered by his hood and a Harvard scarf that leaves only a narrow slit for his eyes. Blinking is not an expressive gesture. It could be a sarcastic blink. Or a malevolent one. 

“It’s less a day, and more a state of mind,” the man says, his voice woolly through his scarf. The rest of him is swaddled in a mustardy, knee-length military parka and big purple snow boots even though it’s not snowing outside. “That’s why we say Happy _Holidays._ Covers all the bases, drags the whole thing out into one long party.”

His eyes crinkle at the corners, so Patrick assumes he’s smiling. Or glaring. Impossible to say, really. They are _beautiful_ eyes, though, too much gold to be brown, flecked with shards of hazel. A bright amber. Like freshly brewed tea. Framed with thick, dark lashes. Although Patrick can’t really see him behind the scarf, the man has an air of being shockingly attractive.

“It’s _November,”_ Patrick says again, because he thinks it bears repeating.

“It’s after Veteran’s Day,” says the customer, propping his elbows on the counter and leaning closer to Patrick who definitely doesn’t detect a distracting waft of CK Eternity because Patrick is not a bloodhound and he definitely isn’t _sniffing_ a strange man. “What else am I supposed to say to you?”

The lunatic is supposed to say t _hank you_ like a normal person and pay for his books and leave. But he doesn’t. He stands there, looking good and smelling gorgeous and _smiling._

Probably because he’s a lunatic. 

Patrick is no longer allowed to call customers lunatics _out loud,_ though. There was a meeting in the employee lounge with Butch-the-Billionaire, owner of the bookshop. It was a long meeting. Patrick was not offered refreshments.

“Do you do this to every retail worker you meet?” Patrick asks. “Seriously? Is this a thing that you do?”

The lunatic looks at Patrick with his head tipped to one side like a puppy. He seems to give his answer a lot of thought, and then he says, “Only the devilishly handsome ones.”

The force of it hits Patrick like a — Well, not a freight train because that’s clichéd and Patrick is too pragmatic for clichés. But it hits him solidly. It hits him like a customer who’s not looking where they’re going, maybe. Patrick’s blush is astronomic. Recordable as a solar event. Visible from the International Space Station. Patrick is very _flustered_ by this turn of events. Patrick is also, maybe, going to die if he doesn’t breathe soon. He sucks in a deep breath and glares at the customer with the beautiful eyes. 

“I’ve never flirted someone to death before,” Eyes says. He says it with such _glee._

Patrick takes a long sip from the travel mug of camomile tea he keeps behind the desk and waits for his lungs to stop spasming. He holds out his hands and takes the stack of coffee table books from the man’s outstretched neon green mittens. Eyes is a fashion disaster. This makes Patrick like him even more.

“No one is dying,” Patrick mutters. Which. Not exactly something he can say with conviction. He _might_ die. He hasn’t ruled it out yet.

“Nice shop,” Eyes says appreciatively. “Is it yours?”

Patrick begins ringing Eyes up carefully. The register is old and temperamental and he’s still not sure about tax after six years of working here, so he punches in the numbers and hopes that the IRS will be kind. “Buddy,” he says, not looking up from the register. “I’m twenty-four. What do _you_ think.”

Eyes lounges over the front desk in a way that would be annoying if it was anyone else doing it. _“Buddy,”_ he echoes. “You could’ve been a young looking forty-something.”

“Do I _look_ forty-something?” Patrick asks, adjusting his flat cap. The cap probably makes him look old. Great for his social anxiety, awful for his image.

“No.” Eyes shakes his head thoughtfully. “But that’s why I said _young looking._ I suppose you could be a business wunderkind or a lesser-spotted Murdoch or something. But… I have my doubts. Too cute.”

“Mmhmm,” Patrick says weakly, handing over the jute bag of books about coffee, and books about poetry, and — oh God, his face is _aflame —_ books about _tantric sex._ “Wow, interesting mix. Nice and… varied.”

“I like coffee almost as much as I like poetry,” the man drawls with a twinkle. 

“Of _course_ you do,” Patrick says, like he sells handsome ( _probably_ handsome) dudes books about tantric sex _all the time._

Playful, Eyes adds, “And sex. I like sex a lot. Probably more than poetry and coffee combined.”

Patrick’s cheeks flush so hot with blood he becomes an immediate fire risk to the books. It’s okay, though. Any fire he starts, he can quell with his sweaty, sweaty palms.

“Um, well,” he squeaks. “It’s… as good a hobby as any, I guess.” 

Not that Patrick remembers. The length of time since he last got laid is measurable on a calendar. _Two_ calendars. Mr Eyes probably has sex all the time. It’s a wonder he found the time to come to the bookshop in the first place, what with all the sex. 

“Happy Holidays,” the man with the nice eyes says again, not remotely embarrassed by his books about tantric sex. 

Which is good. Customers should never feel embarrassed about buying books about tantric sex. Except, Patrick would like _this_ customer to feel embarrassed because he’s hoping there’s a finite amount of embarrassment available in the store and, if the customer takes some, then Patrick can stop feeling like his face is going to melt from his skull.

Patrick folds his arms and glares and doesn’t think about the man with the gorgeous eyes performing acts of advanced carnality. “It’s _November._ I’m not saying Happy Holidays to you.”

“You’re very grouchy. Has anyone told you that?”

Patrick raises his eyebrows. “No. No one. Never.”

Eyes laughs. “What _should_ I say, then?”

Patrick adjusts the peak of his hat and gives this some thought. “You could say ‘Happy period between Veteran’s Day and the time it becomes appropriate to say Happy Holidays.’” Patrick is convinced Eyes is grinning behind his scarf. “But I’m not sure it’s going to catch on.”

“I can try.”

“Don’t let me stop you.”

“I won’t.”

“Good.”

“This is the worst day ever,” Eyes says mournfully. “I’m trying to flirt with you and you’re giving me _nothing._ You’re really hurting my feelings.”

Patrick raises his eyebrows. “Maybe you shouldn’t flirt with people who’re paid to sit behind a counter where they can’t get away from you.”

“But I like you,” Eyes says, and Patrick has a vague notion that this man might be a serial killer. It would be just his luck that the first non-hideous human lifeform to flirt with him this _decade_ is a serial killer. “What’s your name?” he adds, which does nothing to disprove the serial killer theory.

Patrick beckons him closer. He whispers, “There’s a reason I don’t wear a nametag.” 

Even sex-starved, Patrick knows that giving his name to a serial killer would be a bad idea. 

“What’s the reason?” Eyes asks innocently.

“This,” Patrick says, gesturing at Eyes. “This is the reason.”

Eyes looks wounded. “Mean. You’re so mean.”

There is a short, expectant pause. Patrick no idea what he’s supposed to say. 

“Have a nice day,” Patrick says eventually.

“See you later, Lunchbox,” Eyes counters.

“Enjoy the sex books,” Patrick finishes, loudly, which is a cheap shot but Eyes doesn’t seem to mind. 

“Knowledge is power,” he fires over his shoulder, and the bell tinkles over the door and he walks along the street outside, pausing to wave at Patrick through the window, a manoeuvre Patrick wants to find irritating but instead he finds hopelessly charming. 

Patrick watches him go until he loses sight of the parka among the crowds of Christmas shoppers. He daydreams for a minute about the possibility of Eyes returning to the store with the express intention of flirting with him. In Patrick’s daydream he is suave and sophisticated and says brilliant and witty things. This is how he knows it’s a daydream. Real life Patrick would stay stupid, idiotic things and fall down the spiral staircase or something painfully embarrassing like that.

“Patrick,” Vicky-T calls, from somewhere up in the gallery. “We have a Stephen King _situation_ up here.”

There are no Stephen King _situations_ that end positively. This is a fact. Vicky is new to the job but she knows how to hold herself, so chances are he really does need to strap on his manager boots. And, with that, Patrick forgets all about the twinkly-eyed customer and gets to work. 

***

“Someone came in looking for you,” Joe tells Patrick when he gets back from lunch the next day. 

Generally, Patrick takes lunch in the back room but today he was concerned that if he didn’t find an excuse to leave, he was going to murder someone with a Jodi Picoult. Patrick’s _stress_ is beginning to suffer from stress. If one more person asks him for a discount on the discounted books, he will beat them to death with his own resultant stomach ulcer.

Patrick unwinds his Hufflepuff scarf from around his neck and hangs it on the hook behind the door. He shrugs out of his puffy winter coat but leaves his hat on. Joe looks at him like he’s _salivating_ for gossip. 

“You’re not a Hufflepuff,” Joe tells him knowledgeably, stretching out in an armchair. 

_“You’re_ not a customer,” Patrick tells him. “So why are you uglying up my armchairs?”

“See?” Joe raises his eyebrows. _“That’s_ how I know you’re not a Hufflepuff. Slytherin, through and through. Anyway. Your visitor.”

Patrick met Joe when Joe came into the store looking for vinyl. Joe refused to leave, even when Patrick explained they didn’t sell vinyl. Then Patrick said it again. Then he _begged_ Joe to please leave him alone. Joe, totally baked, did not leave Patrick alone. Instead, Joe started talking about local hardcore bands, bands that Patrick liked, but Joe was wrong about them. So Patrick corrected him, and it turned out, Joe was actually pretty cool, if a little spotty on the concept of buying vinyl from a bookshop. Joe now spends his free time — which seems to be bountiful — hanging out in the bookshop and putting his feet on the tables and generally being a charming and handsome pain in the ass. 

Joe leans into Patrick’s personal space. “Didn’t you hear me? I said _someone came in looking for you.”_

“I heard you,” Patrick says, and begins making himself a cup of tea. There are three minutes and twelve seconds left of his lunch break. The hot water hits the infusion and releases the scent of cinnamon and cranberry. “I just don’t care.”

Joe carries on anyway. “Like… a long drink of water,” he says with serious sexual inflection, then pauses. “I mean, if long drinks of water were short. A mouthful of water. An espresso cup of water. Small, but, like, _perfectly_ formed.” He makes a swooping double hand gesture to demonstrate the fuckability of the visitor. Patrick’s glasses fog from the steam of his tea.

“Do you have sensible things to say?” Patrick asks archly, perching himself on the stool behind the counter. “Because if you _don’t_ have sensible things to say, I can kit you out with a broom and give you sensible things to _do.”_

“I don’t work here,” Joe points out. “You can’t just _make_ me do things. This is a bookshop, not a subject population.”

“And yet, you seem to have nowhere else to be,” Patrick replies, taking an oesophagus-punishing mouthful of freshly-brewed tea. “And nothing better to do.”

“I could find better things to do.”

“I live in hope.”

Joe clicks his tongue, and Patrick ignores him. There’s stock take to deal with. Stock take is very important. Imperative to the business model, in fact. It’s definitely more important than— 

“Anyway. He didn’t know your name,” Joe says.

Patrick attempts to raise an eyebrow but probably looks like his face is spasming. “So, how do you know he was looking for me?”

“He asked for the cute guy with the hat,” Joe shrugs. He gestures at Patrick. “Ding, ding, ding! Hot Lunch.”

Patrick begins to blush. “Broom or death,” he says testily.

“I’m just saying—”

“Broom or _death.”_

Joe sulks for a minute, unimpressed by Patrick’s lack of enthusiasm about the mystery visitor. Patrick looks bored and tries very hard not to give away his curiosity. No one comes into the store and asks for him, ever. Fortunately, he’s distracted by three customers with expired coupons and a complaint about the suitability of Stephen King’s It for a ten-year-old child. 

_But it has a clown on the cover,_ says the customer. 

_You picked it up in the horror section and the clown is Tim Curry,_ Patrick points out, not unreasonably. 

He wins out. The customer mutters something about giving it to their uncle, instead.

Finally, Joe decides to steal what Patrick is referring to as a Breathing Break. “He was wearing a yellow coat,” Joe says, and Patrick forgets about being cool and squawks and pivots so quickly that he gives himself whiplash of the ass. “Aha!” Joe crows. “So you _do_ know him!”

“I don’t know _anyone,”_ Patrick insists, more breathlessly than he would like to admit. “I don’t have any friends and I don’t talk to anyone about anything. But, um, what did he say?”

Joe grins and cups his chin on his palm. “He said he’ll see you tomorrow, _Lunchbox.”_

***

The snow hits overnight. Eight-to-ten inches, which would sound _amazing_ if it was literally anything other than snow. It’s accompanied by a howling wind straight off the Hudson that should keep customers away but, obviously, doesn’t, because this is New York and no one lets something like a blizzard get between them and retail therapy. 

Patrick is in a bad mood because he has to fight with the frozen lock on the security shutter and skins his knuckles bloody, because customers trail grey slush on their boots that melts into dirty puddles across the hardwood, because Vicky-T pulls a Christmas playlist off Spotify and hooks her phone up to a set of Bluetooth speakers she finds in the back room and, by the third runthrough, Patrick thinks Bing Crosby can shove his dreams of a white Christmas _all the way_ up his ass. His bad mood feels sticky, clinging to him as he crouches down under the cash desk to fish out the last roll of receipt paper. 

Then, someone starts to screech.

“I need to speak to the manager!” Patrick straightens up so fast he causes blunt force trauma to the back of his skull against the underside of the desk. “I bought a thesaurus from here last week and every page is blank! I have _no words_ to describe how angry I am!” 

_Fuck,_ Patrick mouths, clutching his head. Then he processes the second sentence and realises someone is making fun of him. Someone with a voice that sounds awfully familiar. Patrick keeps his eyes closed and prays for death. He’s pretty sure corpses are excused from mortification. 

When he opens his eyes, he comes face to face with Eyes. 

Eyes who has tugged down his scarf and now has a _nose_ and a _mouth_ and _lips._

Eyes who is the most beautiful, the most _arresting,_ human being Patrick has ever seen.

Patrick stares at Eyes — and mouth, nose, _lips_ — his mouth open unattractively.

“Shhh _oot!”_ he hisses under his breath, rubbing the lump at the back of his head. Not that he doesn’t _want_ to curse, he just knows that Murphy’s law dictates that if he _does_ curse, every child in a six-mile radius will wander into the shop and their mothers will give him nasty looks. “Jesus ffff… Ow. Okay, ow.”

“Oh, jeez,” says Eyes, blinking at Patrick owlishly with snow caught on his hood and in his lashes. “Are you okay?”

“Yes,” Patrick says automatically. He’s not okay. He wonders if he’s concussed. The lump on his head is enormous and needs ice. Patrick might just go outside and shove his head into a snowdrift until he suffocates or succumbs to hypothermia. He hears it’s a peaceful way to die.

Eyes smiles at him, melting and sincere. “So,” he says. “Hello again.”

Patrick grins a stupid grin in spite of – or possibly _because of_ – the head trauma. “Hi,” he says fondly. “It’s fine. I brain myself all the time. Uh, no blood, see?” He holds out his blood-free fingers for Eyes to examine. “Bonus.” Eyes doesn’t say anything, probably because it’s the unsexiest thing Patrick could have chosen to say. Still. Patrick enjoys the view for a moment or two before things become awkward. “So. Can I, um. Help you with something?”

Eyes grins like a Cheshire cat. 

“Happy—”

“It’s November,” Patrick cuts him off. “I am very busy and important. Ask me a bookshop-related question or leave.”

“I need a book,” Eyes declares. 

Patrick looks around the bookshop slowly. He looks at the acres of shelves and neatly organised paperbacks and hardbacks stretching over not one but _two_ floors. There are so many books. Patrick could hurl a rock in any direction and hit ten of them. And Patrick has a terrible arm.

“Oh dear,” he says sadly. “And here we are, fresh out. Such a shame.”

Eyes laughs the ugliest laugh Patrick has ever heard. And, oh. _Oh._ Patrick is struck by the realisation that he _likes_ Eyes. Like, _like_ likes him. He _like_ likes this man with his ugly laugh and charming wit and hipster taste in coffee table books. Patrick hasn’t _like_ liked someone in so long it’s surprising. Like shrugging on last year’s coat the first chilly day in the fall and finding twenty bucks in the pocket. 

Eyes rummages in the discount basket in front of the counter. He pulls out a dog-eared paperback titled _The Knight Before Christmas._ There’s a lot of snow on the cover. And a lady Patrick can only describe as _busty._ And an actual knight, with tousled hair and pneumatic lips. Eyes holds it up. “How about this one?”

Patrick begins to question his judgement on the whole _like_ liking... thing. What Eyes is holding is not literature. Patrick’s not even sure it qualifies as a _book_ in most states. Patrick watches Eyes carefully and waits for the punchline. 

Eyes stares back solemnly. 

It’s clear that this is not a joke.

“Are you serious?” Patrick asks.

“How much?” Eyes replies, very seriously.

Patrick looks at him with mounting horror. He’s not sure he can _like_ like someone who reads books like this. “God. I mean. Free? Just take it. Save me from the embarrassment of having it on the stock take.”

Eyes lights up. “Really? Wow! It can be my Christmas present,” he chirps happily, the book suspended between them and Patrick gives in and cracks up laughing. “What? What’s so funny?”

“You’re…” he starts, and then stops. “Quite something.”

“You could ask my name,” Eyes says, stuffing the paperback down into one of the cavernous pockets of his military parka. “Or my number. This is our second date, after all. It’s weird that we don’t know each other’s names yet.”

Patrick looks at him levelly. “Nope.”

“You’re giving me nothing at all to work with. This isn’t even a _local_ bookshop for me. I took _two_ trains so we could hang out, Lunchbox.” Eyes pouts, then he points to the jar on the counter. “Oh. If we’re dating now, can I have a candy cane?”

“We’re not dating and they’re for the children,” Patrick tells him. 

“And I have a childlike sense of whimsy,” Eyes points out. 

“You mean childish _,”_ Patrick sniffs. But he turns the jar towards Eyes, anyway. “ _Childish_ is the word you’re looking for.”

“Po-tay-to, po-tah-to,” Eyes shrugs, helping himself to a candy cane. 

Patrick rolls his eyes. “Name _one_ person who pronounces it po-tah-to.”

“Question?” Eyes says, tipping his head to one side. Patrick braces himself. “If it’s _not_ Christmas, why do you have candy canes by the cash register?”

“Staff decision, entirely out of my hands,” Patrick says with a shrug. “The coup was bloody but well-fought. Next question.” 

Eyes twinkles at Patrick with his annoying twinkly eyes and jerks his thumb in the direction of the newly assembled, absolutely _unwarranted_ coffee nook in the corner. 

“Alright, what’s that?” he asks, not moving from the counter. 

Patrick didn’t think Eyes would have a next question lined up. Still, he glares in the direction of Eyes’ thumb. Patrick doesn’t _like_ the coffee nook. He doesn’t like that his boss thinks they _need_ a coffee nook. He’s considered starting a petition against the coffee nook but everyone he asks tells him they love coffee and they can’t wait to spill boiling liquid all over his books. Or words to that effect. 

Patrick looks at the tables and chairs, at the obvious coffee bar and the unchalked menu board and the prints on the wall that say things like _Latte_ and _Cappuccino_ and _Mocha_. 

He looks back at Eyes and, deadpan, he says, “Launch site for the New York space program. Obviously.”

Eyes snorts. “You’re a very funny guy.”

“Funny _haha,_ or funny peculiar?”

 _“Funny,”_ Eyes says again. He leans on the counter, props his chin on the backs of his hands, palms downward. He flutters his eyelashes, which is something Patrick has never seen a human being _do_ and Patrick is so thoroughly, hopelessly _charmed_ that he almost forgets to be ornery about it. “You don’t look happy about it. Don’t you like coffee?”

Patrick grunts. He doesn’t like coffee. But it’s more than that. The bookshop is moving on and progressing and Patrick is supposed to feel excited about it because this is supposed to be his career but he can’t stop thinking of it as his Saturday job. His life has stalled. He’s been standing in one place, treading water for the four years since he graduated. He needs something to _happen_ to him. 

It might as well be Eyes. 

“What I like or don’t like doesn’t figure in the owner’s business model. He wanted a coffee bar, so we have a coffee bar. Apparently,” and he adds unnecessary stress to this word, “it’s going to be _great_ for business.”

Eyes considers this as he drums his fingertips against the desk through his woolly mittens. “Will _you_ be making the coffee? I’d buy _so much_ coffee if _you_ were making it.”

That, Patrick thinks, is definite flirtation.

Patrick is not used to being flirted with by extremely good looking customers. Actually, Patrick is not used to being flirted with by anyone. Period. He’s not a Flirt With Me kind of person. It’s not that he thinks he’s _un_ attractive — not like he frightens animals and small children — but the aura he exudes is one that discourages flirtation. It’s his resting murder face that does it. Joe tells him he needs to smile more, and Frank tells him he needs to talk more, and Vicky-T tells him he needs to radiate an air of impenetrable mystery, which is ironic because he isn’t being penetrated by anyone. He is _literally_ impenetrable. So, the chances are this isn’t flirting and Patrick is losing _years_ from his cardiac life for no reason whatsoever. 

Patrick blinks at the customer, who he assumes is good-looking, and he tries to think of something witty to say. 

“My coffee tastes like shit,” he says, without wit. Eyes snorts. “You don’t want to taste my coffee. My coffee will not be the reason we stay in business.”

“Shame. Still. Maybe I’ll stop by when it’s up and running. Explore my secondary interest while checking out my primary.” He _winks._ Patrick emits an embarrassing choked grunt. “I mean you, by the way. _You’re_ my primary interest, Lunchbox.”

“That’s a horrible nickname,” he tells Eyes. 

“It’s an _adorable_ nickname,” says Eyes, hefting his Büx bag. “Well. Thank you for the reading material. Maybe I’ll see you around?”

“Hey, so. Monday?” Patrick stammers. Eyes gives him a look. “The coffee shop? It opens on Monday. If you’re interested. I have, um, _flyers_ or something lying around… Look!” He scrambles in the drawer by the cash register and pulls out a handful of paper. “Free coffee. You should come in and get a free coffee.”

Patrick stuffs the flyer across the desk. Eyes will take it, and then he’ll show up on Monday or he won’t. And if he doesn’t, it’s just one of those things and no one gets their feelings hurt. It’s very important that Patrick doesn’t get his feelings hurt. Patrick holds his breath and stares down at the flyer in his hand. 

“I’ll be there,” Eyes twinkles. “Can’t wait. I’ll take the time to brush up on my flirting technique. You won’t stand a chance when I’m up to full capacity.”

Eyes takes the flyer and their fingers brush and for an insane moment Patrick imagines he can feel it in his _pancreas._ That has to be a sign. Patrick has never been aware of his pancreas before _in his life._

“Looking forward to it,” Patrick says drily.

***

Patrick makes it onto the shop floor a clear thirty minutes before opening on Monday. This is a Christmas miracle. Thinking of Christmas miracles makes him think of Eyes and the coffee bar and the possibility that Eyes might show up for the opening of the coffee bar with his free coffee flyer.

Not that Patrick has given this a lot of thought. Not that he’s laid awake in his dark and silent apartment and thought about their next conversation. Not that he’s got his hopes up. 

(Yes, Patrick has done all of those things.)

When Patrick steps onto the shopfloor, a familiar voice says, “You’re late.”

Before Patrick can apologise to Butch, _another_ familiar voice interrupts.

“You don’t have a Christmas window.”

Patrick turns and meets a pair of bright amber eyes. Patrick effects a slow Jim Halpert blink. When he opens his eyes, nothing has changed. It’s barely eight-thirty and he hasn’t caffeinated, so there’s a chance he’s experiencing an extended session of sleep paralysis and none of this is actually happening, but. 

But.

But somehow. Standing in the middle of Patrick’s bookshop. Wearing a Büx logoed half apron over skinny jeans. With his hair in interesting spikes and swoops like a young anime Elvis Presley. Is _Eyes_. 

“Uh...” Patrick says. 

Eyes is just as astonishingly lovely in his Yale shirt and aggressively pink converse. He is even _lovelier._ Patrick stares and stares. Staring is his new Olympic sport and Patrick is determined to take gold for the US. Eyes clears his throat and points to the window. He’s clearly decided that the problem is that Patrick doesn’t know what a window is, and not that Patrick’s brain is melting gently into his groin. 

“A Christmas window,” he says, again. “You should have one,” he adds. “A Christmas window is the cornerstone for a positive Christmas season in retail,” he finishes. 

It’s clear that Patrick has stepped into an alternate dimension on his way into work.

Patrick says, “Um…”

“Do we need a Christmas window?” Butch asks. “Patrick, is that a thing we need?”

“Everyone else has a Christmas window,” says Eyes. 

And Patrick wants to ask who _everyone_ is, if Eyes has checked every window in New York before he decided to set about ruining Patrick’s life, but then he looks out of the window. There are wreaths in the window of the deli across the road and someone has strung up tinsel in the bakery nearby and even the comic book guys have set a Santa hat on top of their six foot cutout of Batman. There’s a lot of Christmas, generally speaking. 

But Patrick can’t say any of this because Patrick is now a horny, mumbling _idiot._

Patrick clears his throat. “Uh…” 

“Make a Christmas window,” Butch barks. “A good one. But… not an expensive one. Free, if at all possible.”

Patrick begins to suspect it’s going to be a _long_ December.

“It’s _November,”_ Patrick says, which it _is._ He knows it is. He just doesn’t dare check his phone to prove it in front of Butch.

“Actually, it’s _Pete,”_ Eyes says, tapping his name badge and drawing Patrick’s helpless eye contact to his shirt, which is so tight it has to be hampering his circulation. Eyes peers curiously at the un-badged stretch of Patrick’s left pectoral. Patrick experiences sudden-onset involuntary nipple-stiffening and wishes he wore a thicker shirt. “You’re not wearing a name tag.”

“Pete,” Patrick repeats helplessly. _Eyes is called Pete,_ Patrick thinks, dazed. And then, _Who calls their child_ Pete? 

Pete grins. “No, _I’m_ Pete. You are…?”

“Patrick!” Butch snaps. “Wear your nametag, for God’s sake!”

“Patrick,” Patrick says faintly. When Pete smiles, his eyes crinkle at the corners with devastating effect. “I’m. Just Patrick.”

God. Pete is _criminally_ beautiful. There are a lot of tattoos on his arms and maybe around his throat and Patrick would like to figure them all out. He’d like to _lick_ them, if at all possible. Right here on the shop floor, maybe. Pete wears _eyeliner_ and without his coat he’s this gorgeous, lithe kind of slim, all compact muscle and tiny waist that Patrick could probably get his hands around. He is just Patrick’s type. Patrick never imagined he would be so prosaic, so fucking _predictable,_ as to have a type.

Patrick has been so very, very wrong.

His insides shrivel in direct inverse correlation to the way his dick perks, which he tamps down. He takes a deep breath. There are rules about dating colleagues. Actually, there’s one rule and it’s this:

  1. Do not date your colleagues. 



The good news is, without his military parka, Pete is so many rungs above Patrick on the Scoville scale that the risk of them dating is slightly smaller than the risk of Patrick playing a set at Madison Square Garden. 

On the other hand, the fact that Pete owns and wears a mustard military parka knocks off a few points.

“Stump!” Butch barks. Last name only. Like this is some kind of colony. “Orientation.”

“Uh...” Patrick says, apparently unable to say anything else. “I suppose I’d say bisexual, but I’m not eager to put a label on it. Is this a new HR thing?”

“I meant orientate _Pete.”_

Patrick frowns at Pete, confused. “Well, I haven’t _asked_ him yet. It’s none of my business.”

Butch looks as though he may be on the verge of a pulmonary embolism. Pete watches with a fangy grin, his head snapping back and forth like this is the Grand Slam. 

Butch pinches the bridge of his nose. “With the _store,_ Patrick! Orientate him with the _store.”_

“Oh,” Patrick says softly. “Right. Of course.”

This. _This_ is the final level of Hell. Patrick is facing the final boss of Hell. Which is probably the devil and the devil is definitely Pete and the devil wears girls jeans. Now that Patrick has got himself into this terrible situation, he has no idea how to extricate himself. Pete’s mouth isn’t grinning, but Patrick can still see the grin in his annoying crinkly, twinkly eyes. 

Butch leaves with a Büx-labelled coffee cup. “This is good,” he tells Pete, who shrugs modestly. “Make me lots of money.”

The door closes behind him. Patrick locks the door because there’s still twenty-seven minutes until opening. 

“He seems nice,” Pete says mildly. “Is it true that he’s a billionaire?”

Patrick looks at a spot just above Pete’s shoulder, since there’s no way he can look Pete in the eye, and says, “He’s fine. He doesn’t always sound like Jay Gatsby. And yes, he’s a billionaire. He still won’t give you a Christmas bonus so don’t bother asking.”

Patrick irritably moves a box of books from the front door to the desk. Then he moves them back again because there’s no reason to have a box of books on the front desk. 

“You’re mad at me,” Pete says. And, yes. A thousand points to the idiot in the stupid shoes. 

Patrick bristles. “I’m not mad at you,” he insists, taking off into the stacks with Pete trotting at his heels. “This is Baby Angst. Or young adult if we were working somewhere normal, I didn’t come up with the names. It’s a popular section, either way. Lots of people ask about it. I don’t know why I’m telling you this because you’ll be over there, making coffee.”

“You _are_ mad me,” Pete says, picking up a Michael Morpurgo and thumbing through it as he wanders along behind Patrick. He has beautiful hands. “You have a very obvious mad face.”

Patrick stops so abruptly that Pete crashes into his back. On top of everything, Patrick now has to cope with the knowledge of the way Pete’s chest sculpts to his back. There should be laws against this. Patrick will petition his representative. Once he looks up who his representative is. 

Patrick turns aggressively. He almost knocks Pete’s eye out with the brim of his cap. He snaps, “You don’t know me well enough to know if I have a mad face. This is my normal resting bitch face. And this,” he jabs his forefinger aggressively towards a bookshelf, “is Jitters.”

“Jitters?” Pete asks mildly. 

“Thrillers,” Patrick says, rolling his eyes. “It was Butch’s idea. Lovey-Doveys for romance, Food Porn for cookery, Stuff that Happened for historical, Stuff that Might Happen for sci-fi. He thinks it’s hilarious. I think we sound like morons. And I’m not mad at you.”

“Are you mad because I'm the manager of the coffeeshop and you don’t like coffee?” Pete ventures, looking innocent. He puts down the Morpurgo. Good. He shouldn’t have his dirty coffee hands all over the books anyway. “Is this a Montagu and Capulet situation? Do I have to serenade you when you’re taking inventory up in the gallery? Oh Lunchbox, Lunchbox, wherefore art thou, Lunchbox?”

“If you do that, I _will_ fire you,” Patrick says slowly, melting from the imagined embarrassment of Pete _actually_ doing that in front of _actual_ customers and staff. Fuck. Frank would never let him live it down. Even if it _was_ a joke. 

“See?” Pete says smugly. “Definitely mad at me.”

“If I was mad about anything,” Patrick says, and it’s a moot point because obviously he’s _not_ mad about it, being mad about it would be weird and Patrick might be slightly… odd, but he maintains he’s not _weird,_ “I’d be mad that you came into my store — _twice_ — and you took a free book and a free candy cane and you didn’t tell me you were going to be working here.”

Pete blinks at Patrick thoughtfully. The eyeliner is going to cause a coronary. “Okay,” he says slowly. “So. You’re saying I finagled food and books and toyed with your affections? And now you’re mad at me.”

“Yes!” Patrick says irritably. “I mean, no. Maybe? I haven’t decided yet.”

“How about I break the ice with a joke,” Pete offers.

Patrick sighs. “Please don’t.”

“You’ll like this one. What does Father Christmas call his helpers?” Pete leans closer. Patrick rolls his eyes. “Subordinate clauses! Get it?”

Patrick groans. “Oh god.”

Pete grins and raises both arms over his head to stretch and Patrick tells himself sternly not to stare at the flash of underarm hair this reveals. Then he gives up and stares. Pete’s right arm is _covered_ in ink, from his wrist to his shoulder and Patrick wants to bite into the exposed underside of his tricep, where it creases into that soft, dark hair. This is a thought that Patrick has never had before, biting someone’s underarm. He chokes softly and turns it into a cough. They’re so close that Patrick can smell Pete’s deodorant, that he could reach up and casually brush his hair out of his eyes. He would linger if he did. He would tuck it neatly behind Pete’s ears and get a good look at him, at his finely shaped nose, his thick, wide mouth. His wonderful, striking eyes.

Groping colleagues is _definitely_ covered by the staff handbook. There’s a disciplinary procedure that Patrick has never had to use. It would be so embarrassing if he was the first one. So, Patrick doesn’t do that. Instead, he folds his hands in front of his crotch and clears his throat. 

“That’s a horrible joke,” Patrick tells him.

Pete looks sad. “Aw, I thought you’d like that one. I have others?”

“No thanks.”

“Are you still mad at me?”

“It doesn’t matter if I am,” Patrick says firmly. “You’re here now.”

Pete carries on grinning. “Well, _I’m_ stoked we’re gonna be working together. I think you’ll like me, when you get to know me. People usually do. In small doses, anyway.”

Patrick can’t imagine why anyone wouldn’t like Pete in _large_ doses. Patrick would like to drown in Pete. Instead, he shows him around the rest of the shop. 

“So, that’s it,” Patrick says, when they round off through Unfortunate Events (Children’s Fiction). “Orientation.”

Pete grins. “I’d probably say bi, too. You know. If someone pushed me.”

Patrick turns seventeen different shades of red and hurries off into the back room for a sit down. 

***

Patrick has favourite customers.

Sometimes, he questions the wisdom of this. He wonders if having a favourite customer is a bit like having a favourite child and therefore socially frowned upon. But then, he works retail and the crushing majority of people who walk through the door seem to want to force him into an age-inappropriate coronary. No one has called CPS ( _Customer_ Protective Services) yet. So, favourites are fine. 

Gerard is definitely Patrick’s favourite customer. 

He asks for books like _Practical Vampirism_ and _How to Be a Pope_ and _The Joy of Solo Sex_ with a straight face. He makes long and complicated custom orders that force Patrick to call around every available central directory for long out of print texts. He’s worn a grubby priest’s collar since Patrick met him and Patrick’s not sure if he’s _actually_ a member of the clergy or just insanely committed to the Robert Smith aesthetic. Most importantly, Gee is completely off the grid and snarls at UPS vans and refuses to order from Amazon. Patrick loves him very much for that.

“Resident vampire, two o’clock,” Frank informs Patrick when Gee comes in, zooming past with an armful of special orders. “Try to look less edible.”

Frank has a huge crush on Gerard and shows it by quietly insulting him every time he comes into the shop. Which is frequently. Frank also affects disinterest by hiding in the next aisle and staring pensively through a gap in the books. Frank’s particular brand of subtlety works on no one but Gerard who gives Frank longing looks from behind the stacks when he thinks Frank isn’t looking. This is because Gerard also has a crush on Frank. 

Patrick looks at his reflection in the store window and narrows his eyes. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Dude,” Frank says. “You look _delicious_ to vampires. All pink and soft and blood-filled. Like a human creme egg.”

Patrick begins to glower. “Are you calling me f—”

“Fabulous,” Frank corrects with a grin. “Full of sugary sweetness. A pixie stick with sideburns.”

That’s not the most charming compliment Patrick has ever received.

It’s not even Top Ten. 

“Get,” Patrick says, pointing to the special order shelf.

Frank gets.

Gee’s never told Patrick what he does for a living, but he gets a discount using a student ID that expired in 2005. So, probably not an _actual_ priest. They have an arrangement whereby Patrick pretends not to notice and Gee brings his goth friends to book club and is generally well-behaved and good for business. 

Right now, Gee is blinking at Pete from under a tangle of greasy black hair. There are dark circles under his eyes that seem like permanent fixtures, no more sensitive to change than the colour of his eyes or the shape of his nose. He is wearing an expression that suggests he’s seen the face of God. In this case, God has high, angular cheekbones and is a whizz with the milk steamer.

“Who’s your friend?” Gee whispers, awed. 

“Do you mean Pete? Or the French roast?” Patrick asks. 

Gee looks at Patrick seriously. “Both.”

Patrick feels a squirmy little live eel of jealousy in his gut because Gee kind of looks like a sexy alien drug dealer, whereas Patrick looks like a happy Christmas gnome. If Gee makes eyes at Pete, there’s no way Patrick can compete. 

“Yeah, well,” Patrick mutters. “Apparently books aren’t a big enough draw these days.”

“I live here now.” Gee declares happily. “I’m gonna save so much money on rent. Just hook me up with an IV and give me, like, _everything_ you have by Aleister Crowley. I won’t take up much room. Toss a blanket over me, you won’t even know I’m here.”

“I doubt that. A lot,” Patrick laughs. 

He’s interrupted by a long line of college kids putting early christmas money to good use and stocking up on textbooks. By the time he’s rung everyone up and checked student IDs (properly, this time) _and_ allowed them to clear him out of candy canes, Gerard is involved in an expressive conversation with Pete. 

Their heads are close together.

There are hand gestures. 

Pete gives Gerard a long and significant look over the espresso cups. Patrick bolts into the backroom and sits sweatily on a pile of New York Times bestsellers and wonders if he can take up some kind of _habit_ that would require regular breaks from the shop floor. Smoking is out because of his asthma. Maybe he can take up macrame and pretend it’s addictive. Or heroin, because it actually _is_. 

He quickly rules out heroin. His mom would be so disappointed.

When Patrick plods back onto the shop floor — wearily, with a sense of maudlin resignation — Gee corners him by Heebie Jeebies (Occult) because Gee is a cliché and revels in it.

“So,” he says. “About Pete…”

And Patrick’s heart rate accelerates into possible tachycardia. 

Oh, God. They’ve fallen in love. They’ve bonded over surrealist novelists and now they’re engaged. They’ve set a date for the wedding and it’s next week and they’re going to hold the ceremony right here in the bookshop. They’re adopting three kids and ten dogs and they’re going to call _all_ of them Blavatsky. They’re renovating a brownstone in Park Slope and Gerard wants Patrick’s opinion on where to buy candelabras and black silk by the yard. Pete is going to write poetry for Gerard and sign it with lengthy dedications to their adventurous sex life. Patrick will die alone and unloved and no one will notice until his various secretions start dripping through the ceiling. 

Whatever Gerard has to say, Patrick doesn’t want to hear it. He is _deranged_ with jealousy. It leaves him temporarily insane and momentarily vindictive and, without replying, he marches into the stacks and grabs Frank by his (wildly-protesting) elbow and he hauls him across the shop floor and he presents him to Gee with an actual, honest-to-God _flourish._

“—so _fuck_ you,” Frank finishes. 

“Frank likes you,” Patrick hollers, apparently ten years old and not from this fucking _planet._ Frank lets out an undignified squawk and Patrick ducks Frank’s tattooed knuckles. “He _like_ likes you. And I’m giving him a thirty minute coffee break _with full pay_ so he can tell you how much he _like_ likes you and then he can stop _wasting time_ hiding behind the bookshelves and staring at you when he’s supposed to be working.”

“I will kill you,” Frank tells Patrick earnestly. “Slowly. You’ll feel _everything.”_

Patrick rolls his eyes. “Oh, shut up. Gee stares at you, too. Neither of you are as subtle as you think you are.”

Gee’s mouth opens and closes, then opens and closes again. 

He says, very softly, “Frank?”

“I…” Frank starts, then stops, then scrubs his hands over his face and continues, muffled. “Yeah. Okay. You want to grab a coffee?” He glares at Patrick savagely. “My boss is paying for it.”

They shuffle away together and, ten minutes later, Frank is laughing hysterically at something Gee says and Gee is looking at Frank with this soft, _tender_ little smile that curls the corners of his mouth. They are _holding hands_ across the faux-oak tabletop.

So what if Patrick is a little — a _lot_ — jealous? So what if his actions weren’t inspired by the most honourable of intentions? He did that. He brought two people together and now they have a shot at happiness, and New York — maybe the world — feels a little more wonderful. 

Patrick looks at Pete. Not because he _wants_ to look at Pete but because his eye is drawn in that direction with the force of a fucking magnet and that leaves him entirely innocent in the whole ‘looking at Pete’ procedure. Pete looks back at him and the blush that heats Patrick’s cheeks is ridiculous. Apparently, he hasn’t gotten his vascular system under control. Apparently, he’s still in high school. 

Pete smiles at him softly from behind the counter, nods towards Frank and Gee and mouths, “Good job.”

 _Shit,_ Patrick thinks. Then he glares and stomps into the back room to sit down in the gloom and thinks about Pete’s stupid gorgeous eyes and how he’s going to die alone.

***

The coffee nook’s first day is a roaring success. 

Between Patrick, Pete, Vicky-T and Frank, they chase out the last stragglers lingering over their coffee. Pete does this by politely offering them refills. Patrick does it by standing two feet away from them with his arms crossed, sighing aggressively until they get the message and leave. 

Patrick’s method is demonstrably more successful than Pete’s. 

Patrick doesn’t blame them for hesitating; the street outside is lost behind a curtain of thick, white flakes and it’s cold enough to snatch his breath away every time someone opens the door. He shivers as he pulls the security gate down over the door. The snow is forming drifts against the wall and his shoes crunch through it in a satisfying way.

“Free coffee,” Pete says cheerfully, handing out cardboard Büx cups when Patrick gets back inside, snow on his cap and caught in his lashes. “It’s a signature blend, please be kind.”

Vicky-T descends on her cup. “Free coffee,” she breathes, like Pete is offering free cocaine. She takes a slow sip. She looks at Pete and then back at Patrick. “Oh. Mygod. This is freaking _amazing._ If you don’t give me a pay rise then Pete is my new favourite. I might switch sides and go work for him, instead.”

“I was never your favourite,” Patrick points out. “Name _one time_ I’ve been your favourite. Yesterday, you told me that if I went missing, you wouldn’t alert the authorities.”

“I maintain that was fair,” she says. Vicky-T is a law student at NYU. It shows.

“I asked you to come in on Sunday,” Patrick says mildly.

“Exactly,” Vicky-T nods.

“You’re _contracted_ to work Sundays! I’m just too nice to actually enforce it!”

Vicky-T narrows her eyes. “Don’t you want to be my favourite?”

“Your favourite is Frank, then Gee, then Joe.” Patrick pulls a face. “And now Pete is in there somewhere. I don’t even feature on your favourites list. Besides, you’re a terrible assistant. Please, feel free to go become a terrible barista instead.”

Vicky-T thinks about this, then shrugs. “Fair.”

“You’re always welcome to join me,” Pete says to Vicky-T with a flutter of his dark, dark lashes and he might be flirting, so Patrick glares with force at the display of Dan Browns they keep by the window. Dan Brown hasn’t actually done anything to Patrick, aside from being Dan Brown and writing the kind of novels Dan Brown writes and thus attracting the sort of customers who read Dan Brown novels. Still. Who else is he going to glare at? Pete? For flirting? Patrick looks at the back room with longing. 

“Wait,” Frank says, when Pete brandishes a coffee cup at him. “I’m—”

“Vegan,” Pete nods. “I know. It’s oat milk. Not soy. Soy is terrible, only an idiot would add soy milk to coffee and I, contrary to popular belief, am not an idiot. Now drink up and tell me what you think.”

“Oh, _shit.”_ Frank takes an enthusiastic mouthful and groans. “That’s fucking _good._ Can we keep him, Patrick? Please, please, please?”

“And who’s going to clean out his litter tray when you get bored?” Patrick asks grumpily. 

“A Pete is for life, not just for Christmas,” Pete says, smiling a charming, lopsided smile with his big, smiley teeth. Which, seriously. Not that Patrick _wouldn’t_ keep Pete for life, because he would. He absolutely would. Not in a creepy, chained-in-the-basement way. Well. Maybe not. Being around Pete feels like being in the early stages of a heart attack. Patrick is clearly a masochist.

Patrick refuses a cup of coffee and grumbles into his travel mug of camomile tea. “It’s _not_ Christmas.”

When they’ve finished their drinks and the others leave — Vicky-T kisses Patrick on the cheek and nods in Pete’s direction and she whispers ‘I like this one, don’t scare him’ — Patrick dusts the shelves as Pete washes up and mops. The silence is endless. Patrick wants to make a witty observation or tell a clever anecdote but he’s a tiny bit worried about what will come out of his mouth if he opens it. So, he hooks his teeth into his bottom lip and concentrates on dusting. 

“I can help you with the Christmas window,” Pete says suddenly, and Patrick — leaning over the gap between two booshelves — twists so quickly he catches the buckle of his belt between the shelves and, for the life of him, can’t figure out how to free it. It’s wedged. He glares at the buckle and the buckle seems largely unbothered. He can’t move. He is hooked by the genitals on a shelf of true crime. He looks _insane._ He frowns at the buckle and tries to surreptitiously wiggle it free, which probably makes him look like he’s masturbating. 

His life is a Michael Frayn novel.

“Hmm?” Patrick says weakly, hoping Pete won’t pay attention to the ridiculous bookshop manager with his crotch caught on a bookshelf. 

Pete glances across the room. “The window.” He points in the direction of the window, again, convinced that Patrick doesn’t know what the sheet of glass at the front of the shop is for. “We can do it together.”

It is very important that Pete leaves the shop immediately so that Patrick can kick off his jeans and free himself via the act of semi-public nudity. In the meantime, and because Pete is looking at him, Patrick makes a show of making wide, polishy gestures with his hands. Pete’s frown suggests this is not as convincing as Patrick hoped. 

Patrick makes a dismissive sound in the back of his throat. “What? Oh. No. Don’t — You don’t have to do that.”

“I’d like to,” Pete insists. “I have some ideas I think you’ll really like. Hey, is something wrong?” 

Pete takes half a step towards Patrick. 

“No!” Patrick barks, panicked. “No, everything is absolutely _fine._ Just — You can stay right exactly where you are, I’m totally okay, I just…” Patrick can’t admit he’s caught by the crotch. He _can’t._ No one recovers from an incident like this. This is the kind of embarrassment people _die_ from. But Pete is moving closer and Patrick is running out of options so he tugs and he yanks and he prays to a series of Gods he doesn’t believe in for mercy and then the buckle pops free and he staggers backwards into a shelf of Unfortunate Events and is immediately _beaned_ with ten hardback copies of _Guess How Much I Love You?_ one after the other, rat-a-tat-tat. _“Fuck,”_ he whispers. He whispers it with _feeling._

“Are you okay?” Pete asks, concerned. And then Pete’s hands are on Patrick’s face, his strong fingers carding through Patrick’s hair and Patrick thinks he might have gone blind from Pete touching him. Then, Pete says, “Can you open your eyes? Are you knocked out? You probably won’t answer if you are, so, um, wiggle your nose if you can hear me?” 

This confirms that Patrick is sitting on the floor with his eyes closed, like a lunatic. He could front it out. He could _pretend_ to be knocked out for a little while. There’s no shame in pretending to be dead. Dead people probably don’t feel embarrassment on a molecular level. 

“I’m calling 911,” Pete declares. In ten minutes, the room will be filled with paramedics and Patrick will be forced to admit he had to fake his own death because he got his crotch caught on a bookshelf. He will be forced to _pay_ for the privilege, because that’s not a point he wants to argue with his insurer.

This is not a future Patrick wants to live. 

Patrick’s eyes open. “Don’t you dare.”

“You’re not dead, awesome,” Pete grins and drags Patrick to his feet and shuffles around, pushing books back onto the shelf and smoothing down Patrick’s t-shirt which seems to involve Pete’s hands sculpting over Patrick’s chest and nipples. “Let’s make a Christmas window.”

***

Patrick has no idea how to create a convincing Christmas window. 

Fortunately, Pete has many, many ideas. 

After dismissing the ludicrous — _We could dress Frank in a Santa suit and have him sit beside a Christmas tree all day_ — the expensive — _We could go to Lowes buy a half dozen rolls of white loft insulation and use it as fake snow, it’ll be fine it we don’t breathe in —_ to the downright dangerous — _I have an idea, but it involves making something that the NYPD might consider a ‘flamethrower’ —_ they settle for googling ideas that won’t kill, maim or bankrupt them. 

They agree on creating a Christmas tree sculpture by stacking ever-decreasing rings of books, one on top of the other. Then they drape it in lights from the grocery store nearby and create a snowstorm of paper snowflakes from pages torn out of Dan Brown books. They string the snowflakes from the ceiling and make a star out of cardboard and, actually? It looks… nice. 

“Do you like it?” Pete asks.

Patrick thinks about saying something cool or cutting that would continue the completely unbelievable facade that he doesn’t like Pete. The Christmas lights twinkle gently in the window, the snow fluttering down just beyond. He smiles. “It’s great,” he says honestly. “And… thanks. For helping. I should’ve said thank you before, but. I don’t… I don’t spend a lot of time with other people outside of work. Which, like, I guess this only qualifies in the sense that we stopped getting paid two hours ago. God, I just...”

Pete looks at Patrick with the intensity of someone who isn’t seeing Patrick’s unremarkable blue-green eyes, his mouth with the lower lip that’s too thick for the upper one, his silly sideburns and feathery, gingery hair and stupid, stupid taste in tweedy flat caps. Or, with the intensity of someone who _is_ seeing all of those things, but who might actually _like_ them. Patrick shoves that ridiculous thought away. He clears his throat and tries to think of something intelligent to say. 

Nothing. He can’t think of a single thing to say.

Patrick blushes. He turns away and busies himself with his coat and his scarf and keying the code into the security alarm.

“Walk you home?” Pete says lightly as Patrick rolls down the security gate. The fairy lights twinkle in the window. 

And, oh. Yes. Patrick would like that very much. But.

“This is me,” Patrick says apologetically, pointing up. 

Pete frowns and squints up into the snow. “What’s you? You’re a snowman? You only appear at Christmas time? You’re actually Santa Claus? You’re three elves in a trench coat and the top one is always angry about the placement of the bell on the middle one’s hat? Oh my God, that last one makes so much sense.”

“I’m… No? What?” Patrick says, waving his hand from side to side. “There’s an apartment upstairs. Uh, _my_ apartment. Well, it’s Butch’s apartment, but he lets me live there. Um, in exchange for rent. I’m not… it’s not some kind of _arrangement._ I rent the apartment. Which is upstairs.”

Pete pulls a face. “Oh. That’s disappointing.”

Patrick, who can’t imagine why the fact he lives above his place of work might be disappointing to anyone but himself, says, “Why?” 

Pete looks at him with his wide honey eyes. “Because I had a plan,” he says. “But fuck it. This’ll do.”

Pete gets his hands around Patrick’s face and slides his body up against Patrick’s — lean and hard and hot, even through Pete’s horrible parka and Patrick’s navy wool peacoat — and Pete _kisses_ him. 

And Patrick forgets how to breathe.

God, Pete’s _mouth,_ his wonderful, God-given _mouth._ First kisses are not supposed to be magical, Patrick thinks faintly. They’re supposed to be awkward, with clashing teeth and noses that don’t quite line up and apologies and trying again and learning how to do it right.

But this? This is… And here, Patrick runs out of vocabulary. Because this is… 

His brain puddles warmly.

All he can think is Pete, and Pete, and Pete. 

Patrick wants to _die_ inside of this kiss.

Patrick gets both hands under Pete’s parka and smooths his palms over the warm planes of Pete’s sides, his ribs, the knobbly hardness of his hip bones. Pete kisses Patrick until Patrick is gasping, and then he kisses him some more, his tongue sliding over Patrick’s until they’re panting into one another’s mouths. “Pete,” Patrick begs, and doesn’t really know what he’s begging for. “Fuck, _Pete.”_

“Mmhmm,” Pete murmurs, “yeah, babe, fuck Pete,” and Patrick has never wanted a kiss to swallow him whole before. But now? Oh, he _wants._ He wants, and he wants, and he wants. 

Patrick is not supposed to kiss men like Pete, not like this. Not out in the street in the snow with the fairy lights twinkling gently behind them. Not with Pete’s hands fisted into the feather of Patrick’s hair just behind his ears, holding him close like Patrick might break away, might leave, might _stop kissing Pete._ Not with Pete murmuring, “Patrick, Patrick, _Patrick,”_ into Patrick’s mouth, his teeth closing softly around Patrick’s lower lip as he tugs and tugs and tugs and lets it go with a snap. “God, Patrick.”

“Pete,” Patrick says helplessly, against Pete’s lips. They kiss again, softer this time, Pete’s mouth barely moving against Patrick’s, his lips slow and sweet and firm. Patrick sinks his fingers into Pete’s belt and holds on until Pete breaks the kiss with a desperate sort of sigh. 

Pete rests their foreheads together. Patrick takes a deep breath, and then another, and feels like the interior of a shooting star, all sparkle and glitter. “I…” he says softly. “That was.”

“Patrick,” Pete says again, rubbing his nose against Patrick’s. It is the most tender thing. Patrick pushes his hands through Pete’s hair and tries to remember how to breathe. “Patrick, Patrick, _Pa-trick.”_ Patrick likes hearing Pete say his name like that, all soft and sweet and breathless. Popping the P and clicking the ck, elongating the vowels so they roll around his mouth like honey. Patrick wants to hear Pete say it when he’s desperate, when it sounds like a prayer.

There’s a protocol for what happens next, Patrick knows. Patrick will invite Pete to come up to his apartment and Pete will say yes and Patrick will work out all of Pete’s soft, delicious sounds and how to coax them from him. Patrick will lick his way over all of those tattoos and find any more that linger, hidden from sight. Patrick opens his mouth and says, “So…”

And Pete kisses the words away, just once, a press of his mouth Patrick’s warm and sweet, and then he untangles himself and steps back. Patrick feels the loss on a basic biological level. Like evolution in reverse, Patrick sinks back into the cold, primordial goop of life Before Pete. All known warmth leeches out of his body. Patrick didn’t realise he was so cold, that he hungered for so much. He blinks at Pete in confusion. 

Pete says, “It’s after midnight. It’s December. Happy Holidays.”

Patrick boggles at him. “What?”

“December,” Pete says again, nodding toward the bookshop and the display they created several _light years_ ago, when the universe was an entirely different place because Pete hadn’t kissed Patrick stupid up against the security gate. “I’ll see you tomorrow, all bright-eyed and ready for the holidays.”

Patrick blinks slowly. His glasses are fogged from the heat of their kiss, the tips of his ears are warm but his nose is very cold. Pete, apparently, does not understand the protocol. Or, more likely, Pete doesn’t want to fuck Patrick. “Oh,” Patrick says vaguely. “I… Yes. Tomorrow. Good.”

“Night,” Pete says fondly, and ruffles Patrick’s hair. Like that’s a normal thing to do. Like Patrick is a golden retriever puppy and not a man Pete just kissed past the point of sensibility. “Sweet dreams, Lunchbox.”

And then he takes off down the silent street in his ugly coat and Patrick watches him leave until Pete takes a sharp right onto East 10th, towards Cooper Square and the subway, and Patrick thinks, _What the fuck even is my life right now?_ Then, Patrick unlocks the security door that leads to the narrow staircase that leads to his tiny apartment and he collapses through his front door and onto his awful couch where he lies in the dark and stares at the ceiling and watches passing buses cast patterns on the paintwork. 

He thinks about Pete — and _kissing_ Pete — for a long time. 

Patrick goes to bed too confused to sleep.

***

The next morning, Patrick pulls out the little turntable he consigned to the backroom a couple of years ago. He leafs through the vinyl collection he stole from his dad or found lying around in goodwill or stole out of dumpsters and he slips on My Aim is True. The notes echo around the store, looping between the shelves and humming under the chairs as he unlocks and boots up the cash register and inventory system and greets Pete with a cautious ‘Good morning.’ 

“Lunchbox,” Pete says, awestruck. “Were you _singing?”_

Patrick shrugs and tries to look cool and misses by several miles. “I can stop, if you want.”

“You’d better not,” Pete grins. 

Pete doesn’t mention the night before, but he _does_ sling an arm around Patrick’s waist and lead him in a clumsy two-step around the tables in the coffee nook. “Get off of me,” Patrick grumbles, but doesn’t pull away. 

“You look _gorgeous_ when you blush,” Pete tells him, and Patrick blushes predictably. “Let me make you a coffee?”

“No thanks,” Patrick says, rattling his half-empty travel mug at Pete. “I’m good.”

So, yes, Pete looks slightly disappointed but he heads off to do whatever it is coffeeshop managers _do_ before their customers arrive and Patrick concentrates on hauling out the chalkboard onto the street in the snow — _This way? Books! That way? No idea. Wolves, probably. Do you want to risk it?_ — and by the time he comes back inside, Pete is engrossed in a serious-looking conversation with Frank and Patrick doesn’t like to interrupt.

Patrick’s morning is fine. He sells a lot of books to confused grandparents who come inside looking for Harry Potter but leave weighted down with complete collections of Half Upon a Time and Tyme because they’re a) better and b) their authors didn’t reduce the LGBT community to clickbait. 

Just before lunch, a man wearing an aggressively masculine beard and cargo shorts (in _December?_ In the _snow?)_ stalks into the shop with intent and thumps a tray down onto the counter in front of Patrick.

“Um?” Patrick says. “Hi?”

“Try one,” says Muscles, pointing to what looks to be a chocolate brownie but could be cleverly disguised anthrax. 

Patrick, scared of eating a brownie of unknown provenance, but measurably _more_ scared of saying no to Muscles, tentatively peels a corner from a brownie and pops it into his mouth. He does not immediately succumb to a fast-acting nerve agent, which is good. He chews and swallows and smacks his lips a few times. Then, he grabs the brownie in his fist and shovels the whole thing into his mouth, backhoe-style. 

“Oh my _fuck,”_ Patrick says, spraying crumbs. “That’s — There are _sonnets_ in here that aren’t as beautiful as this brownie. I want to marry this brownie. I want to carpet my apartment in brownies just like it, so I can eat my way out every morning.”

Pete, apparently sensing food, wanders over in his Columbia beanie. He grabs a cookie and takes a bite and makes a noise that prickles the fine hair at the nape of Patrick’s neck. “Oh my god, Patrick,” he groans. _Groans._ Fucking _groans,_ like he has no idea the effect this has on Patrick’s rapidly growing list of erogenous predilections that all involve Pete. “I’ve never tasted a cookie this good in my life! I want to be buried with this cookie. I want to leave behind a cookie wife and cookie kids who stand at my grave and leave me more cookies.”

“Good,” says Muscles, and he holds out his hand. Patrick shakes it enthusiastically. “I’m Andy. I own the vegan bakery across the street. I’m going to be providing baked goods to your coffee shop from now on.”

Patrick agrees. 

***

Pete changes the name of the drink sizes: short story, novel, and tome. 

Patrick is more charmed by this than he ought to be. 

He wants to know more about Pete. He wants to know more about the man who pushed him up against the security gate and kissed him until his brain puddled and his knees went weak. He has a thirst for Pete-related knowledge but he can’t just _ask._ What would he _say?_ _Oh, so, I was wondering if you’d like to list your Desert Island Discs, your favourite ice cream flavour and tell me if you’d rather have an arm for a leg or a leg for an arm?_ Patrick knows this would sound insane, so Patrick hovers in Baby Angst and watches Pete carefully and attempts to absorb all things Wentz by symbiotic transference. 

Today, Pete is wearing a Princeton hoodie. It’s too big and hangs loose at his shoulders, ends halfway down his ass and pools over his hands as he makes lattes and cappuccinos and mochas. He pushes the sleeves up without thinking, revealing his _wrists_ and his _watch_ and Patrick is going to asphyxiate. 

So far, all Patrick has been able to ascertain is that Pete has a _spectacular_ butt and, when he bends over to pick up sacks of coffee beans or boxes of coffee cups, he bends at the waist which is terrible for his spine but wonderful for Patrick’s new hobby of staring at the round of Pete’s cheeks under his jeans. There’s a possibility, a _hint_ of a tattoo at the base of Pete’s spine. Patrick needs to collect _so much_ data.

Pete has fastened tinsel to every possible surface of his coffee nook. There is a tiny _real_ christmas tree in a pot by the counter, encroaching dangerously on the no man’s land between the stock room and the closet where Patrick used to go to cry but can’t anymore, because it’s filled with coffee beans and creamer and those little wooden stirrers that seem to have replaced spoons. Pete is wearing a sprig of mistletoe on his name tag. He is wearing a _santa hat_. He is ridiculously dorky. He is _astonishingly_ lovely.

“If that boy was an apple, he’d be a delicious,” Vicky-T sighs dreamily. 

Patrick, who thought he was alone, screams. Vicky-T laughs and Patrick’s early New Year’s resolution is to find nicer friends. 

Then Patrick thinks about what Vicky-T just said and begins to feel jealous. “If you like that sort of thing,” he says cattily. “It’s a little _obvious,_ though, isn’t he?”

“Short, dark and handsome? Oh, yeah. A total hardship to look at, I’m gonna demand additional pay to cope with the trauma,” Vicky-T says, and Patrick scowls. 

Vicky-T has wide, dark eyes, a mouth that’s probably illegal in the New York area and legs that extend to some time next September. Not to mention a killer accent and an attitude to match. Patrick is small and stubby and blessed with severe myopia. To make matters worse, he’s from _Chicago,_ so his accent isn’t interesting at all. There’s no way he can compete with Vicky-T. Why are so many attractive people falling in love with stupid, handsome Pete? 

“You demand additional pay every five minutes,” Patrick points out, distracted by imagining what Vicky-T and Pete’s children might look like. Photogenic, obviously. “You demanded additional pay to go in the stockroom yesterday.”

Vicky-T gives him a look. “It’s dark in there. If I tripped, I would sue you.”

“You would be unsuccessful. There’s a light switch right by the door.”

Vicky-T narrows her eyes into catty, coffee-coloured slits. “Maybe next time I’ll take _Pete_ into the stockroom with me. Kid’s got an ass that could light up a room.”

“You will go nowhere with Pete,” Patrick snaps. 

Vicky-T looks at him. It’s a very interested look. A _knowing_ look. “Oh?” she says. “And why’s that?”

“Because…” Patrick trails off. _Because I really like him, and I never really like_ anyone _and it’s not fair_. No, he can’t say that. That makes him sound insane. “Because I pay you to work, not to make out with strange guys in cupboards.”

“Pete isn’t strange.”

“On Sunday, he swallowed the contents of a glow-stick. He’s the strangest dude I’ve ever met.”

“It’s all about context.”

“A _glow-stick,_ Victoria. A fucking _glow-stick.”_

“Oh my God! You _like_ him,” Vicky-T declares triumphantly. 

“Oh my God,” Patrick bleats, panicked. “I do not!”

“You do! You _like_ him! You _like_ Emo Pete! I need to tell him! You met in a _bookshop,_ the cutest of all the meet-cutes. Someone needs to inform Richard Curtis, like, ten minutes ago.”

And, okay. Patrick cannot even.

Patrick is unable to can. 

“Shut up,” he hisses from the corner of his mouth, because his whole face has gone into rigor mortis.

“This is a matter of the heart,” Vicky-T tells him. “Matters of the heart are very important. They’re the cornerstone of every book we have in the shop. The world is nothing without crusades of _love.”_

She pronounces it _lurve._ Her voice is very loud. 

“I will _die_ if you don’t be quiet,” Patrick says seriously. 

“See, this is why you need to tell him,” Vicky-T opines. “Better out than in, man.”

“That’s gas,” Patrick tells her. 

Vicky-T gives him another of her shrewd, cat-eyed looks. “Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t incite a rom-com. One _good_ reason, Mr Stump, why you should be excused from your pursuit of true love. This is fate. You need a very good reason for interfering with _fate.”_

“If you promise not to say _anything,_ I’ll cover your Saturday shift,” Patrick says with a grimace.

“And?”

Patrick sighs. “And your Christmas bonus will be _legendary.”_

Vicky-T smirks at him. “Pleasure doing business with you, Patrick Haversham.”

It takes Patrick ten minutes, two laps of the stockroom, and a glass of water before he gets the reference. He spends the rest of the afternoon wondering if he ought to buy a cat. 

***

“Who’s your favourite author?” 

Patrick looks up from his laptop and blinks steadily for a few seconds before he says, “Wha?” and he thinks it’s so eloquent that, after a moment or two, he says it again. _“Wha?”_

Pete leans against his mop looking quixotic and alluring with his hair falling into his eyes. He’s not wearing eyeliner today, which lends him an air of undressed vulnerability. It also reveals the sexy beginnings of crow’s feet gathering at the corners of his eyes which Patrick didn’t realise was a thing he was into. But he is. Oh, he so is.

Pete waves a hand at the nearest shelf. “Your favourite author, Lunchbox. Who is it?” 

Patrick blinks. “You can’t just spring a question like that on someone.”

“Can’t I?” Pete smiles, the corners of his wide, expressive mouth folding up and showing his teeth. 

“Who’s yours?” Patrick parries. 

“I asked first.”

“What are we, six?”

“Emotionally or chronologically?”

“Ugh.” Patrick props his chin on his fist and blinks at Pete from the far side of the cash desk. “You’re impossible.”

Pete waltzes closer, mopping as he goes, until he’s swirling the mop against the toes of Patrick’s shoes. This should irritate Patrick immensely. Instead, Patrick examines Pete’s mouth, his nose, the way his eyebrows shape as he looks up at Patrick from under his lashes. 

Pete says, “Favourite author, Stump. I know you read books, you spend your life in a mausoleum dedicated to the written word. So, who writes your favourites? Who’s your patron saint of liars and fakes?”

“You think authors are liars and fakes?” Patrick asks, confused. “All of them? Why?”

Pete shrugs. “I think if anyone who wasn’t a writer presented entirely fabricated stories outside of a known narrative, we would call them a liar, yes. Pick one.”

“Well, let’s see...” Patrick says. “I mean, do we have a particular genre to work with, or is it just—”

Slowly, Pete reaches up and tucks a strand of Patrick’s hair behind his ear and Patrick holds his breath because Vicky-T is right and this is directly out of a Richard Curtis movie and Pete’s mouth is so close, so wide and _soft_ and warm enough that it radiates heat and, and, and…

Pete kisses Patrick. Just once. At the corner of Patrick’s mouth like Pete intended to kiss him on the cheek but changed his mind at the last possible moment. Pete’s stubble is sharp, an exquisite contrast to the softness of his lips. Patrick keeps his eyes open and stares, astonished, at the bookshelves behind Pete’s head. This doesn’t happen to Patrick. It just _doesn’t._ Pete pulls away and lowers his head and goes right back to mopping the floor. Patrick is shattered to pieces. Patrick has forgotten how to think, how to _breathe._

“I don’t know,” Patrick whispers, his mouth still warm from Pete’s. He touches two fingers to his lower lip and fancies it feels hotter than it did before. “I mean, there’s a lot of books out there. The world is full of them and I’ve only read a drop in the ocean. I could name some, sure. But maybe my _real_ favourite is just around the next corner, you know?”

Pete smiles at the mop, at the floor, at anything but at Patrick and Patrick hopes — fervently and with feeling — that more kissing does not depend on him sounding like a normal human being.

“Every time I think I have you worked out, you go and say something like _that,”_ Pete says with deep and enduring admiration. “You’re a riddle, wrapped in an enigma, wrapped in an argyle sweater vest, Patrick Martin Stump.”

Patrick thinks about that a lot over the next few days. 

***

It’s ten days until Christmas and Patrick takes back everything he’s ever said about Amazon and no one using independent shops on the high street. The world has gone mad for buying local, which is good for Patrick’s continued desire to eat and pay the rent. The world is filled with idiots, though, so it’s terrible for his ongoing wish _not_ to find himself in prison for murder.

When everyone leaves and Pete ushers stragglers from the coffee bar, Patrick sweeps and Pete mops and, when Patrick is finished sweeping, he plops down onto the floor and begins the restock. There are lots of boxes of books. Finishing before midnight is a hopeless pipe dream. 

The problem with being the manager of a bookshop is that it requires Patrick to spend a ridiculous amount of time _in_ the bookshop. And then he lives _above_ the bookshop so, while everyone else calls off for drinks on the way home, Patrick walks upstairs and watches Netflix or listens to vinyl or fills in paperwork and continues thinking about the bookshop. Patrick has often thought it might be convenient to become a Borrower. At least then, he could move behind the skirting boards and he wouldn’t have to go outside in the snow. 

Other people get to go about their lives doing interesting things and meeting interesting people and having interesting sex and Patrick spends his time shuttling between the bookshop and the apartment above the bookshop with the occasional sojourn to the bagel place nearby thrown in to keep things interesting.

Patrick envies other people.

 _Especially_ the ones who get to have interesting sex. 

Patrick is supposed to be concentrating on the restock. Patrick never had any trouble at all concentrating on the restock before Pete started working at Büx. Patrick was a model employee. Now, he is a nefarious, dirty little man who spends his nights staring out of the window at passing New Yorkers and tourists and wondering who among them is going to get laid in the near future. He blames the frequent glimpses of Pete’s tattoos. 

Summoned by Patrick’s inappropriate thoughts, Pete wanders into view in a hot pink Duke hoodie, tight red jeans and brown chelsea boots. He is a fashion disaster. An eyesore of a human. He is delectable and Patrick wants to bite down into him and find out how he tastes. He quickly moves a stack of paperbacks from one side of the shelf to the other.

“Something on your mind?” Pete asks, moving stacks of cardboard cups and lining them up neatly beside the espresso machine. 

“The world can shove Christmas up its ass,” Patrick mutters.

Pete laughs and throws a wadded up napkin in Patrick’s direction. “A grinch? In _our_ bookshop? It’s more likely than you think.”

“I’m not a grinch,” Patrick insists. “I’m just… thinking. Very important thoughts.”

Pete begins restocking the jars of tea behind the coffee counter. “Penny for them.”

Patrick chews his lip and imagines a world in which he is brave and intelligent and witty and charming. He would say something brilliant and Pete would laugh and laughing would lead to more kissing and then Patrick would lead Pete upstairs to his little bedroom in the eaves and then they would do the filthiest, most depraved things to one another until it was time to open the shop again in the morning. 

Patrick clears his throat and wonders if he might be a little bit brave, a little bit charming. Pete has kissed him, after all. Twice. He looks across the desk and stares at a book about horticulture. 

“I was thinking about chickens,” he says.

And, no. No, no, no. Patrick is not brave or charming. Patrick is a fucking idiot. Patrick wants Greenwich to develop a sinkhole. A very contained sinkhole. A sinkhole just about large enough for him to slip through and fall into the molten core of the earth because Patrick just told Pete — sultry, gorgeous, edible _Pete_ — that he is thinking about _chickens._ Patrick is moving to Alaska or Minsk or the US Antarctic research facility. Somewhere far-flung and dark and cold because Patrick is clearly not fit for normal human consumption. Patrick can only converse with penguins. Patrick needs to burrow his way into the snow and remain there until spring.

Before Patrick can set about lobotomising himself with a copy of Howard’s End, Pete turns and looks at him. 

“What kind of chickens?” Pete asks, interested, his head tipped to one side and his hair falling into his eyes. 

_Don’t say cocks,_ Patrick thinks. Which is a stupid thing to think because now he’s planted that seed his mouth is definitely going to see the harvest.

“Cocks,” Patrick says inevitably, staring directly at Pete’s crotch, conveniently eye level. “Um, cockerills. You know. Boy, um… boy chickens.”

“You were thinking about boy chickens? Cocks?” Pete asks, placing down his box of tea leaves so that he can look at Patrick with a raised eyebrow and his hands on his hips. “Is that something you think about a lot?”

“I think a lot of very important and varied thoughts,” Patrick says, and wonders if it might be possible to swallow his own tongue so that he can choke to death and escape this conversation. “And sometimes I think about cocks. Yes.”

Pete walks across the bookshop floor and his chelsea boots click-click-click against the hardwood until he’s standing in front of Patrick. He kneels down. This close, his eyes are so rich and deep and dark that Patrick can hardly bear to look at them. Patrick blinks, and closes his hands into tight fists against his knees, and looks carefully at Pete’s left eyebrow. 

“Hi,” Pete says quietly. 

Patrick clears his throat. “Um. Hello.”

“Hey, look,” Pete says and points up. “Mistletoe.” 

There’s a copy of something called Mistletoe Farm on the shelf above Patrick’s head. He blinks at the book and then at Pete and shakes his head. 

“I don’t think that’s—”

Pete cuts him off with a kiss. 

Pete leans over and grabs two greedy fistfuls of Patrick’s sweater vest and he kisses Patrick full on the mouth. Patrick, unprepared to be kissed, opens his mouth in surprise, or shock, or so he can shout _Holy shit, Pete is_ kissing _me,_ and Pete accepts the invitation like it’s handwritten and slides his tongue into Patrick’s mouth. 

The sound that leaks from the corners of Patrick’s mouth will feature one day on a Patrick Stump: These Are Your Most Embarrassing Moments montage. When he’s dying, most likely. It’s hard to care too much when being kissed by Pete. Kissed with a deep and enduring hunger. Pete kisses like he’s checking for cavities. Like he’s swallowed a rare and fast-acting poison and the last drop of antidote rests beneath Patrick’s tongue. Like the world is a vacuum and the only escape from anoxia is to gulp the dregs of breathable air from the bottom of Patrick’s lungs. Patrick is dizzy. Patrick rocks back on his ass and grabs at Pete’s hoodie strings and hangs on for dear life because Patrick will be swept away by this kiss. 

Just when Patrick starts to think he might pass out, Pete slows it down. He bites gently into Patrick’s bottom lip and soothes the sting with a flick of his tongue. He thumbs open Patrick’s collar and leaves small, sucking kisses along Patrick’s jaw and down into his throat where Patrick’s pulse throbs. He pulls back and rests their foreheads together and Patrick is gasping, choking, starved of oxygen because all blood and thought and reason has flooded straight to his cock. 

“Oh my God,” Patrick whispers, awed. If Patrick woke up this morning and imagined how his day might end — which he did not — he didn’t think it would end with Pete’s mouth on his throat. Life is wonderful like that sometimes. Patrick pants, frantic for air, taking in Pete’s eyes and his nose and his eyelashes and the quirk of his mouth and then he kisses him, a sharp little exclamation point of a kiss right on Pete’s mouth. 

Pete grins. “Tell me, Lunchbox,” he rumbles, leaning in to mouth at Patrick’s throat, “have you ever had sex in the shop? Or is that against the rules?” 

Pete said _sex._ Patrick’s brain shortcircuits and fries and goes into a spiraling and uncontrollable meltdown because Pete said _sex,_ and, unless Patrick is very much mistaken, Pete is propositioning him. That or there’s a rolled up Dean Koontz down his jeans. 

Pete leans back and Patrick tries not to feel bereft. Then Pete takes off his Duke hoodie and Patrick feels aroused, instead. The Saves the Day shirt underneath is tight enough that Patrick can see Pete’s nipples. Academically, at least. In reality, Patrick would never look at the nipples of an employee. Patrick hauls his eyes up. He can make an exception, sometimes. 

Patrick clears his throat loudly. “Um,” he says. “To answer each of those questions… No. There are no specific rules about sex in the shop in the employee handbook. But, also, no. I haven’t had… sex in the shop. Ever.”

Patrick doesn’t add that he hasn’t had sex _at all_ in quite some time. 

Pete raises both eyebrows and grins a sexy grin. “Would you like to?”

Patrick nods so hard his neck cramps. He nods because he doesn’t trust himself to open his mouth to speak because his mouth isn’t full of words, it’s full of _sounds,_ brimmed to the top with ridiculous moans and whimpers and desperate fucking _mewling cries_ that Patrick wants to make as Pete runs his hands slowly from Patrick’s shoulders to his chest where he thumbs delicately over Patrick’s hard and sensitive nipples and… And. Fuck. Patrick is going to die right here on the bookshop floor. 

“You are _so_ tense,” Pete murmurs, as he leans in and bites into the sinew of Patrick’s shoulder and Patrick makes one of those embarrassing little noises through his _nose._ “Let me help you relax.”

Patrick would like to relax. Patrick would like nothing more than to relax. But Pete takes his shirt off — casually, without thinking, just shrugging it up and over his head and dropping it onto the floor and exposing skin and ink and _nipples_ — and Patrick begins to hyperventilate. This is an elaborate joke. It has to be. There is no other explanation. 

“You…” Patrick says, with eloquence. “You… You…”

“Me,” Pete confirms, kneeling in front of Patrick, close enough that Patrick can feel the heat of him, close enough that Patrick is convinced that atoms are going to start… just, jumping off him and attaching to Pete. There’s a magnetic tingle in Patrick’s fingertips. He can taste it, like iron filings on the back of his tongue. He is _scientifically bound_ to begin touching Pete. 

They go to the floor like they’ve rehearsed it. And Pete is so graceful and lithe and _perfect_ and Patrick is clumsy and stupid and somehow tangles himself in his own knees. The moment he gets his arms around Pete’s waist, though, when he pulls him in and spreads his legs and brings Pete snug between his thighs, Patrick breathes again. Slow and deep. A blissed out, happy sigh that shudders up through his stomach and chest and puffs against the ink on Pete’s collar bone. And, yes. Now Patrick is looking at the tattoo there, his mouth watering, his teeth tingling into the roots like he’s biting down into tinfoil, now Patrick _has_ to taste. 

The first lick over the twist of thorns around Pete’s throat is considered. Pete is so, so still, hot and solid between Patrick’s thighs as Patrick tastes his skin with careful, testing flicks of his tongue. This is a data overload. Patrick is _drowning_ in new Pete-related intelligence, all of it catalogued and filed and stored and Patrick is going to use it to destroy Pete from the inside. Like a coup d'etat, Patrick will take over. Slowly, Patrick hooks his teeth into the spit-wet skin of Pete’s throat and presses down, like he can pulp the taste of those thorns onto his tongue. Pete makes a shivery, desperate sound and presses his groin into Patrick’s. 

“Tell me what you want,” Pete whispers, his fingers — long and dextrous — playing over Patrick’s zipper, teasing the hardness just beneath. 

“Here’s what’s going to happen,” someone says, and Patrick jumps, because it sounds like his voice, but those aren’t his words. He’s never sounded so sexy. So rough and gravelled and thoroughly in control. Pete whimpers and arches into him and Patrick hopes this new, sexy side of himself knows where this is going. “I’m going to take off your jeans and I’m going to get down between your thighs and I’m going to suck you off so fucking _thoroughly_ that you’re going to forget everything but my name.”

Pete gapes at Patrick. “Yes,” he says, nodding frantically. “Yes, let’s do _that.”_

Patrick grabs Pete by the dick and steers him onto his back. “Good boy,” he murmurs, and Pete purrs in his throat like a cat and arches his back and raises his arms up and over his head and Patrick thumbs his dark and coppery nipples and Pete makes this — this _sound,_ this incredible rumbling groan and— “God,” Patrick whispers, his voice wrecked already, “You’re so, so good for me.”

Patrick tries to let his mind go blank. He wants to do this on autopilot, not because he doesn’t want to think about it, but because he knows how to give head, the pragmatics of it are simple — lick, swallow, suck — and Patrick knows he’s good at it. But, also, this is Pete, a point not worth forgetting, and Patrick has been thinking about this since the first _Happy Holidays_ and, so help him, if he messes this up he will never, ever stop kicking himself. Patrick needs to give Pete a blowjob that will tether Pete to him _for life._

So, absolutely no pressure there, then.

He removes Pete’s jeans without major incident. Of course, Pete doesn’t wear underwear and his angry red cock bobs up from his skinny jeans and smacks against his flat and gorgeous stomach. He leaks onto the tattoo there, drip, drip, dripping down into the delicate concave of his belly. Patrick is enraptured. Patrick stares. Patrick rubs his fingers through the mess and then licks them clean. Pete is salty-bitter on his skin. Pete is wonderful.

Pete thumbs over Patrick’s lower lip, already damp and swollen, and smiles an endearing and dopey smile. “You have the _nicest_ mouth,” he declares dreamily. 

“You have the nicest dick,” Patrick whispers, awestruck, his palm pressed to the heat of it. God, but Pete _does._ This handsome, curving thickness. Dusky red and urgent with heat and blood. 

Pete pushes up into the touch. “We should introduce the two of them, babe. I bet they’re gonna get along great.”

“Stop rushing me, I’m savouring the moment,” Patrick says, then he has an idea that Pete might make wonderful noises if someone — some _Patrick_ — sucks on his nipples. So, Patrick leans forward and drags his tongue over one and seals his mouth in a sucking kiss and Pete makes a gorgeous, gaspy _noise_ and Patrick realises he’s going to have to start writing this stuff down before he forgets. That’s the thing about moments like this. They’re ethereal, more like dreams or bubbles, and if they’re not committed to something better than memory then they fade away. Patrick is not ready to let this one go.

“Oh, Jesus fuck, Patrick,” Pete groans, as Patrick keeps his hand on Pete’s lovely cock and licks his way over the ink between Pete’s hipbones. “Don’t stop, please don’t stop…”

Patrick looks at Pete. Pete who he’s imagined naked so many times over the past few weeks. Imagination is absolutely no substitute for reality, it seems. Pete is the loveliest thing Patrick has ever seen. He buries his nose in Pete’s short and salty pubic hair and kisses the tender crease between thigh and groin. 

“I thought I was promised cock sucking,” Pete groans, on his elbows with his breathing fast and desperate. One hand is knotted in Patrick’s hair, the other flexing and closing, flexing and closing over the hardwood floor. This has to be wreaking havoc on his ass. 

Patrick nuzzles into the shaft of Pete’s cock, licking once, base to tip and back again and tasting salt and come. “What’s that phrase about patience and virtue?”

“That’s it,” Pete gasps, eyes trained on Patrick’s mouth. “ _That’s_ the phrase. Patience. Virtue. There’s not much else to it, sweetheart, and while I appreciate the literary lesson, I really think you should — _Oh my fucking sweet baby Jesus.”_

Patrick slides his mouth down over Pete’s cock. He is filled to the brim with the taste of Pete’s skin and Pete’s dick and Pete’s come and the sounds fall out of him in an unchecked wave. He moans into Pete’s dick. He makes… wet, greedy _snuffling_ whines around Pete’s erection. The only reason he’s not embarrassed is because Pete is non-verbal, back arched, head thrown back, his skin misted with sweat and his lungs stuttering so hard Patrick wonders if he might be having a heart attack. Patrick has lost all desire to be a tease. Patrick doesn’t _want_ Pete to come. It’s beyond that. What Patrick feels is muscle memory, is instinct. Patrick _needs_ Pete to come in the same way he _needs_ to breathe, _needs_ his heart to beat. He grabs Pete by the hips and chokes himself on that pink and lovely thickness until his nose is buried in Pete’s pubes. _Come for me,_ he thinks, delirious, _Fucking come for me._

And Pete does. With a cry of Patrick’s name, Pete fills Patrick’s mouth with his orgasm until Patrick is spluttering, gasping, swallowing and mostly succeeding and chasing the bits he misses down Pete’s twitching cock with a clever curl of his tongue. Patrick’s own dick throbs, ignored in the confines of his pants. He doesn’t care. He wants to make Pete come again and again and again and—

“Oh, _sweetheart,”_ Pete whispers, pulling Patrick off his cock by a fistful of coppery hair. The sound Patrick makes is soft and distressed. “That was… God, I’ll think of something clever to say when my brain fires up again. Come here.”

So, Patrick kneels over Pete’s thighs as Pete thumbs open his button and zipper, as Pete shoves aside the heavy weight of Patrick’s buckle and belt and tugs down his trousers, his underwear, and reveals the angry red compass point of Patrick’s quivering erection. The air in the room feels like a liquid, like Patrick’s stiff and aching cock is surrounded in something warm as they both stare down at it. Patrick has never felt less self-conscious. 

Pete’s eyebrows lift. He runs a careful, exploratory hand along the velvet length of it and offers Patrick’s penis a hungry grin. “Holy shit. Good for you, Lunchbox. Good for you. Now, be a good boy and feed me your cock and don’t stop until you’ve made a total fucking mess of me.”

Patrick can _feel_ his blood pressure drop. He makes a soft, gurgling whimper. 

Patrick shuffles up Pete’s body and braces a hand to the shelf in front of him. He looks down and slowly, slowly, s l o w l y, guides his cock into Pete’s mouth. First the head, the flaring tip of it that meets Pete’s tongue and Patrick has to pause and close his eyes and breathe very carefully through his nose as Pete licks into the slit. He slides in deeper, the flaring length of it explored by Pete’s inquisitive tongue and lips. Patrick hits the back of Pete’s throat and, after a moment, feels Pete take a breath, relax, and open up for him. When he stops, Pete’s lips are flush with Patrick’s groin, his amber eyes watering, his mouth stretched wide around Patrick’s length. 

“Fucking hell,” Patrick breathes. “God, look at you.”

Pete sinks his nails into Patrick’s ass and lets loose a singing whine that hums straight through Patrick’s dorsal vein. 

Then, Patrick takes a hold of the shelf in both hands and grips so hard his knuckles turn white. Pete looks up at him and doesn’t look away as Patrick starts to move his hips. His mouth is so full of Patrick and Patrick can still taste Pete lingering against his tongue and teeth and Patrick thinks this is it. This is the pinnacle of all sensation and nothing will ever feel like this. Pete sucks him off slowly, like he’s savouring the taste, the feel, the heft of Patrick on his tongue. 

Pete does something clever. Some neat little swallowing tightness that he couples with a twist of his tongue against the crown and Patrick — Patrick — Patrick is exploding. The world is like a snowglobe and every flake that brushes against Patrick’s skin burns electric. 

Patrick comes gasping Pete’s name. Patrick lets go. 

Afterward, they lie on the floor of the bookshop. They’re a broken and sweaty mess. There’s come on the floor and on their skin and, somehow, on the box of books that Patrick was stocking before Pete — started this. Pete reaches over and takes Patrick’s hand. Patrick raises their hands to his mouth and kisses each of Pete’s knuckles in turn. 

“Happy fucking Holidays,” Pete whispers. 

Patrick starts to think that Pete might be making fun of him. It’s a hot, sweaty feeling that has him scrambling for his zipper. “I — We should probably… You know?”

Pete, entirely naked and embarrassed not at all, props himself casually on an elbow and gives his dick a quick shake off with one hand. “Hmm?” he asks lazily. “Got somewhere to be?”

“Well, the floor isn’t exactly comfortable. Or, you know, _clean,”_ Patrick sniffs. 

“We made an awesome mess, didn’t we?” Pete sighs dreamily. Then: “Can I spend the night, then? With you?”

Patrick boggles. “I — What? You want to… But I — What?”

“Your apartment,” Pete says, like it’s normal to ask to stay in Patrick’s apartment. Like this isn’t an elaborate joke. “Can I sleep there? Or are you going to kick me out into the cold? That’s not very charitable, especially given the time of year. Even the innkeeper found a stable.”

“You’ve never asked to stay in my apartment before,” Patrick points out.

Pete looks at Patrick like he’s very stupid. “You’ve never sucked me off until I can’t feel my legs before, either. Tonight is a night for firsts.”

Which is a fair point. 

So, Patrick says, “Um. Yes, then. I guess we should lock up.”

Ten minutes later, they stagger up the stairs and into Patrick’s tiny apartment in the eaves. The layout of the building is such that it’s barely bigger than a good-sized hallway; the bedroom capped off at the far end like a ship’s cabin, arched with old oak beams that crisscross the low ceiling with a tiny shower room off to one side. The living room/kitchen is a clever use of the remaining space, cut into an L-shape around the bedroom. Inspired by what Pete has done with the bookshop, there’s a tiny Christmas tree tucked between the TV and the wall. Everywhere is piled high with books and vinyl. If Patrick expected visitors, he would’ve changed the sheets. 

“Very nice,” Pete says appreciatively, patting a pile of records by the couch. He drops his coat over the back of an Ikea dining chair and kicks his boots under the coffee table. The apartment looks better for these additions. 

“Look,” Patrick starts, twisting his cap nervously in his hands. “If this is some kind of elaborate joke, I want you to know that it’s not funny, it’s just cruel.”

Pete gives Patrick a look that he’s clearly learnt from Vicky-T. “I beg your pardon?”

“I just…” Patrick trails off and takes a deep breath and tries again. “I just don’t want you to think that you can do this and then laugh at me.”

“Patrick,” Pete says seriously, taking Patrick’s face in both hands. “I buy hardback books about tantric sex. I’m taking this _very_ seriously.”

Which, honestly? Not exactly what Patrick _meant,_ but okay. 

“Is that your bed?” Pete asks brightly, pointing through the open bedroom door as Patrick wonders if he should offer instant coffee to a coffee shop manager and God, he is a paragon of terrible indecision and social anxiety that _this_ is what’s bothering him right now.

“Um, yes?” he says. “That's — The only bed.” 

“There was only one bed!” Pete gasps, clutching his heart. Then, he looks serious. “Patrick? Would you be a sweetheart and give me the tour, but starting with the bed? Just, I’ve got this great idea about riding you through it, if you don’t mind.”

Patrick’s stomach twists like he’s waiting at the top of a rollercoaster. He blinks at Pete slowly. “Could you… repeat that.”

“Take off your clothes,” Pete repeats, his voice low and sexy, shrugging out of his shirt once more. “And lie on the bed and let me fuck you down into bookshop.”

Patrick takes off his clothes.

Patrick lies on the bed. 

Patrick grips Pete’s hips as Pete slides down onto his cock and thinks, at this rate, Pete might kill him before Christmas.

***

If Patrick thought about the morning after when Pete was fucking him stupid in the apartment above the bookshop, he probably assumed Pete would slip away during the night. And Patrick probably decided he was okay with that, because Patrick got to be fucked stupid by Pete. It was a fair trade, he (probably) thought. If he was capable of thinking. Which he wasn’t. Because he was being fucked stupid and then he passed out and the last thing he remembers thinking is _Fucking hell, just… fucking hell._

So, when Patrick wakes up, dry-mouthed and full-bladdered and with a pleasant, tingly ache in his back, thighs and balls, he’s… surprised. He’s baffled, actually. Because there’s Pete, stretched out and claiming far more mattress real estate than anyone that tiny has a right to take. 

Pete is scrolling through his phone casually. He looks up and smiles when Patrick shifts and yawns unattractively. “Morning, sleepyhead.”

“Um,” Patrick says, tilting his head away so he doesn’t hit Pete in the gorgeous face with his rancid morning breath. “Hello?”

“You’ve had your dick in my ass,” Pete observes, and Patrick’s ratchets from _sleeping_ to _mortified_ so quickly he smells burning. “No need to talk to me like I’m an unexpected housekeeper.”

Patrick wipes crust from his eyes and tries not to think about how he usually looks in the mirror above the sink when he first wakes up. “I — Good morning. Did you sleep well?”

“Nope,” Pete says, and Patrick’s face must fall because Pete’s grin widens and he ruffles Patrick’s hair. “No offence, babe. I never sleep well. Insomniac.”

Patrick doesn’t know. Patrick could fall asleep standing up, propped against a marching band. Patrick _has_ fallen asleep draped over a speaker in a club. Saying that to an insomniac seems like bragging, though, so Patrick squints down at Pete’s Duke hoodie, abandoned on the floor, and casts about for sophisticated conversation.

“What’s up with the college merch?” he asks, which isn’t suave or sophisticated at all. 

Pete cocks his head and peers down at the hoodie. “What do you mean?”

“Well, you know,” Patrick shrugs. “There’s no way you’ve had time to go to that many schools. You’re what? Four? Maybe five years older than I am. Even if you started a new school every year since you turned eighteen, that’s ten universities at a push, you’ve worn seventeen different—”

“You’ve been counting!” Pete declares, delighted. He claps his hands gleefully. “Oh, Lunchbox, I was starting to think you didn’t care.”

Patrick’s blood ignites. He schools his face into a look of neutrality. He doesn’t mind, on a theoretical level at least, if Pete knows that Patrick pays attention to him. He minds a lot if Pete doesn’t reciprocate that interest. Attraction is so confusing.

“I’m just _saying,_ you have a lot of university shirts and hoodies and hats and, um, belts. I’m just wondering what’s up with that,” Patrick continues. “Have you actually _been_ to any of those schools?”

Pete looks affronted. “I’ve _been_ to all of them,” he declares loftily. “My dad,” and Pete clears his throat and looks impossibly pompous, “was very keen on me going to one of those universities. Sent me off for open days and visits and campus tours with heads of every law school that might be paid to take me. He’s a lawyer, wanted me to follow in his footsteps or something painfully fucking dull like that.”

Patrick blinks. “Oh. And the hoodies?”

“Just… looking for a good fit, I suppose,” Pete says with a shrug. “Waiting for the right match.”

Realisation dawns. “You stole them from people you had sex with, didn’t you?”

Pete grins. “I’ll never tell. How about you? Did you go to college?”

“NYU,” Patrick says vaguely. He knows it’s a good school, he just hates having to acknowledge that it’s a good school, and that he went there. Reverse snobbery. 

Pete nods and purses his lips. “Very nice. Lit?”

“Music.”

“Of course.”

Patrick sits up. “But you didn’t go to college? I mean, obviously, you’re not a lawyer. Does that — I mean, did he mind? Your dad?”

“Babe,” Pete laughs. “I told him life is for living. And trust funds. Trust funds are awesome. He got over it.”

Patrick blinks. “Oh.”

“Now,” Pete sets his phone down on the pile of books Patrick has been using as a nightstand, “how about breakfast? Andy does Christmas breakfast muffins that have to be tasted to be believed. I’ll admit, I’m nervous about it because once you’ve had them, you’re not going to be interested in putting anything else in your mouth at all, and…” Pete shimmies his hips which makes his penis sway and if Pete was anyone else Patrick would find it ridiculous, but Pete is Pete and Patrick finds it charming. “Well. That would be a shame, wouldn’t it?”

“I’ll probably make exceptions,” Patrick says, staring at Pete’s dick. Then he kisses Pete’s mouth, and his throat, and his chest, and down over his stomach until he’s inches away from the red heat of Pete’s cock. “I mean, it’s good to keep these things varied, right?”

Patrick sucks gently on the tip of Pete’s erection.

“Fuck,” Pete whispers. Which Patrick thinks means he agrees.

***

Pete spends a lot of time in Patrick’s apartment after that. So much so, that Patrick stops asking if he’s coming up after they close the shop. He just waits if he’s finished first, or Pete waits for him, and they walk up the narrow staircase together and fall into bed and fuck, or else they flop onto the sofa and watch Netflix and Patrick thinks it’s… nice. 

It’s nice to have someone in the apartment with him. When Patrick talks aloud — which he does a lot more than he should — Pete answers, and Patrick feels a lot less lonely. A man is not an island and Patrick grows used to Pete’s company and Pete’s shoes on the floor and Pete’s razor in the bathroom. They don’t fight. About anything, really. Because Patrick is hot-headed and bad-tempered but Pete knows how to laugh him out of it. And Pete is noisy and boorish but Patrick finds it fascinating and charming. Plus, they love all of the same music, the same 80s movies, the same books. So, really, what do they have to fight about?

Besides. They’re not in a relationship. That makes a difference, thanks very much.

Three days before Christmas, they close the shop early and head into SoHo for Butch-funded binge-drinking. Pete, Vicky-T and Frank are coming, obviously, but Patrick has invited Joe and Andy and Gee along for the ride along with a half dozen regulars from book club. 

Pete changes into a black button down, silk tie and three piece suit without the jacket. There’s even more product in his hair and he’s wearing smokey, night-time eyeliner that he seems to have applied with his thumbs. Patrick wants to run up the stairs and rifle through his closet and try to find something cooler than his second-best Levi’s and shirt-with-an-ascot. He thought the ascot looked kind of charming in a goofy way when he picked it out. Now he thinks he looks ridiculous. 

“Joe is taking advantage of the free employee coffee,” Pete tells everyone as they gather in front of the counter and Patrick switches off the lights. 

Patrick looks at Joe, then looks at Pete. “Joe doesn’t work here. If you’re giving him free employee coffee then he’s _definitely_ taking advantage.”

Joe looks sheepish. “About that…”

Pete stares at Joe, confused. “But if he doesn’t work here, why does he spend so much time here?”

“Excellent question,” Patrick shrugs. “He should get a hobby.”

“Fuck you,” Joe says with humour, and then Vicky-T slings tinsel around his neck like a feather boa and leads him out of the door singing Step Into Christmas at noise violation volume. 

“Isn’t the expectation that this behaviour starts _after_ they’re drunk?” Pete says smiling. Pete’s smile does a lot of things to Patrick’s chest. Tightening, a quickening of rosy breath. Patrick smiles back and doesn’t say anything. 

Frank shrugs and says, “Welcome to Büx.” He adds, “Things will get messy,” and it sounds like an ordained prophecy as he steps out into the cold and the snow and the rush of partying New Yorkers. 

Pete and Patrick remain in the bookshop. Just the two of them. Pete gives him a lingering look and Patrick tingles all over and scrubs a hand against his cheek for something to do that _isn’t_ pushing Pete up against the counter and kissing him breathless. Not that Patrick doesn’t _want_ to push Pete up against the counter, he does, more than anything, it’s just. Well. He doesn’t know. They haven’t had a conversation about it yet. 

“You look very handsome,” Pete says, tweaking Patrick’s ascot playfully. 

Patrick has no idea if Pete is joking so he blushes and shuffles from one foot to the other and says, “Thanks.” He adds, “You too,” as an afterthought, although it’s very true, obviously. Pete always looks handsome. 

Pete offers his elbow like something out of a Heyer novel. “Well, shall we?”

Patrick nods and they step out into the cold where he pulls down the roll gate and then walks with Pete and Vicky-T and Joe and Frank and Gee down towards Seventh Avenue. Tonight, he wants to get wasted _as fuck._

***

Patrick is wasted as fuck. 

He’s also horizontal, sprawled across a table at the back of a basement gay bar. He can’t fall over, but that’s because he has Pete on one side — Pete, with one foot propped against the bench opposite and his hair flopping into his eyes — and the most beautiful drag queen Patrick has ever laid eyes on flanking him on the other. 

“You are beautiful,” Patrick slurs, patting her gorgeous, fishnet-stockinged knee. 

“I know, sweetie,” she tells him kindly, as Pete smooths his hair. Pete has nice hands, Patrick thinks. 

“You have nice hands,” Patrick tells Pete. “And she,” he pats her fishnets again, “is very beautiful.”

Pete is laughing at him. That or Patrick just told a hilarious joke. Patrick tells lots of hilarious jokes, so it could go either way. 

“You know that’s Brendon from book club, don’t you?” Pete asks. 

Patrick gapes at Brendon. “You’re _Brendon?”_ he asks, and Brendon nods. 

“Only on weekdays, lovely.”

“Brendon Urie. Beebo. Beeb-utiful. Beeb-licious. Fuck,” Patrick says. He gropes for his neon green cocktail. With inevitability, he drops most of it down his shirt. “Oopsie daisy!”

“You’re very drunk,” Pete tells him, sounding fond, but also drunk. Hypocrisy. Patrick won’t stand for it. Patrick won’t stand for most things. He’s afraid he’ll fall over if he tries.

“I know you are, but what am I?” Patrick sing-songs. 

“Gorgeous,” Pete says, too quickly.

“Awww.” Patrick downs the cocktail. His head swims. He tries to pat Pete’s cheek but misses and ends up sort of, groping his throat instead. “You’re cute. Hot. Totally hot.”

Brendon laughs. “God, the two of you are sickening. When’s the wedding?”

“Oh,” Patrick slurs. “We’re not—”

“Shots!” Vicky-T shouts, crashing a tray down onto the table. “Merry fucking Christmas you fucking motherfuckers.”

“Ooh,” Patrick says, making grabby hands. “Shots!”

“In my professional opinion, as a purveyor of beverages, you should not have a shot,” Pete says. 

Patrick looks at the tray. The shots are green and red and they seem to have half a ton of edible glitter dumped into them. They are garnished with candy cane pieces and _whipped cream._ They are sickening and festive and clearly _glowing_ with so much ill-advised jagermeister that they look like nuclear waste. 

Patrick licks his lips. “Why not? ‘M a — a grown up. Can — ‘m over the age of — of — condiment. No, wait. Conflict? Condominium?”

“Consent,” Joe tells him helpfully. Helpful Joe. Patrick likes him a lot. Is — Should Joe get a raise? No. Joe isn’t an employee. Pete is laughing so hard that Patrick knows he’s saying all of this out loud. The shots glow fluorescent. Ah, yes. Alcohol. 

“Happy fucking Holidays!” Patrick shouts, reaching out unsteadily. 

“Patrick, no,” Pete says, steadying him on one side. 

“Patrick, no,” says Brendon, steadying him on the other side. 

Patrick grabs a shot: “Patrick, yes!”

The alcohol burns all the way down. It burns like undiluted paint thinner. It burns and it is _wonderful._ Patrick is euphoric and everyone is smiling and the pictures are going to be on Insta in the morning and Patrick would like to bet he looks amazing. He’s on top of the world. Patrick slings an arm around Pete and kisses him on the corner of the mouth. 

“You’re my favourite person,” he slurs. “Seriously. You’re — you’re m’fuckin’ _lobster._ ‘M so into you. You into me? I… I…” Patrick feels the cream curdle in his stomach. He claps a hand over his mouth. “Oh God,” he groans. “‘M gonna throw up.”

“Outside!” Pete shrieks, propelling Patrick out of the club and up the stairs. 

The night air is crisp and cold with a breeze coming straight off the Hudson. It ruffles Patrick’s hair as Pete stands with him in the alley beside the club, rubbing small circles into his back as Patrick throws up into the gutter. 

“Oh God,” Patrick groans. “Dying. Tell my mom I love her.”

Pete touches his brow. “Let’s get you home,” he murmurs, and he doesn’t sound pissed or annoyed. He sounds fond and loving and Patrick blinks at him blearily and lets Pete steer him along the sidewalk with a hand tucked into Patrick’s back pocket.

They walk in silence, which is nice. It’s snowing again and it muffles the sound of the traffic on Seventh and makes Greenwich feel all quaint and village-y. Of course, Patrick starts thinking about living in villages with Pete. Small houses in suburban commuter towns with children and dogs and a commuter railcard. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Pete is. 

Pete is just.

The thing is, Pete is enigmatic and handsome and bright. Whereas Patrick is boring and prosaic and dull. But, Patrick thinks, he doesn’t know what Pete is _to him._ There’ve been stranger matches. He starts, his voice uncertain, “D’you think we could...” Then he stops.

Patrick shakes his head to clear the thoughts like an Etch-a-Sketch which upsets his tenuous hold on his ability to remain upright and he almost crashes over the curb and into the path of a passing cab. 

“Holy shit, Patrick!” Pete yelps, catching Patrick by the back of his belt and hauling him onto the sidewalk where Patrick falls, inevitably and clumsily and so, so stupidly, so he lands in the slush and his ass is soaked and his palms are scraped up with gravel rash. And that’s okay, Patrick thinks, that’s okay because it doesn’t hurt as much as wanting Pete without having Pete hurts. And it’s not as embarrassing as being in love with Pete when Pete can never love him back. 

“I’m okay,” Patrick says, when he’s not really. “Just tripped.”

“You’re an awful drunk,” Pete informs him, and Patrick grins dopily and tries to kiss him but Pete is having none of it and marches him on towards the apartment. “No way. No kissing. You just threw up everything you’ve eaten for the past six weeks. You’re lucky I love you, or I’d toss you into the river.”

“You don’t, though,” Patrick says quietly. His heart feels very chilly, suddenly. Like it’s on the outside of his ribs and skin and Pete is examining it under a microscope.

Pete frowns: “What? What do you… What are you talking about?”

“I know you’re not into me, not like I’m into you,” Patrick says bravely, although he doesn’t feel very brave when he says it out loud. He feels a curious mix of sober and wasted, slightly pathetic, soggy in the middle. He feels like an undercooked breakfast muffin. 

“How could you think that?” Pete asks, affronted. “How could you _possibly_ think _that?”_

“Because you’re you,” Patrick points out. “And I’m me. And… isn’t it obv — obliv — obi — Oblivious?”

Pete looks astonished. It’s a look that suggests things Patrick can’t decipher right now, in Greenwich, at one in the morning, in the snow, with a melting wet patch spreading across the seat of his jeans and making him shiver.

“You are very, very drunk,” Pete says diplomatically. “Which means right now is a terrible time to have a conversation like this. Let’s get you home and get you to sleep and, in the morning, when you’re sober, we can talk about this some more.”

Patrick passes out the second Pete drops him onto the mattress. He wakes at three in the morning and Pete is still there, watching Patrick sleep and thumbing through the paperback Patrick gave him before he knew his name was Pete. There’s a glass of water next to Patrick’s side of the bed and a couple of painkillers and Patrick swallows them down and mutters a grateful, _Thanks, Pete_ into Pete’s hip and Pete pets his hair and whispers, _Don’t mention it,_ and goes right back to reading his book. 

Patrick snuggles closer and Pete keeps stroking his hair until he falls back to sleep.

In the morning, Patrick doesn’t remember a thing. 

***

It’s Christmas Eve and the shop is filled to bursting, just like it was last year. It’s Christmas Eve and the line snakes all the way around Baby Angst, into Jitters and down towards Stuff that Happened, just like it did last year. It’s Christmas Eve, and the citizens of New York don’t seem to have figured out that time is linear and Christmas arrives on the same date every time, _just like last year._

They have run out of, in order, candy canes, tome-sized cardboard cups and copies of A Christmas Carol. If one more person asks Patrick for something _just like A Christmas Carol, but different,_ he is going to throw himself out of the window. He is going to build a bonfire out of copies of The Grinch Who Stole Christmas, and he is going to use it to burn consumerism to the ground. 

“Happy Holidays,” he says blandly, as another customer snatches their bag from his hand without a second glance. Then he smiles, because Pete has slipped a bottle of water and a pretzel onto the corner of the counter when Patrick wasn’t looking. 

“Thank you,” he mouths at Pete.

“You’re welcome,” Pete mouths back, smiling.

When the final customer is chased from the shop, and Vicky-T has left, and Frank has walked out arm in arm with Gee, and Patrick has flipped the sign to _closed,_ he takes a long, shuddering breath and thanks whatever deity is listening that he gets a full fifty-two weeks before he has to do _that_ again.

“Did you have any plans? For Christmas?” Pete asks casually, stacking the chairs onto the tables. 

Patrick shrugs and stares down at the cash register. Every year, Patrick spends his Christmas Day tucked into the apartment upstairs, watching crappy television and eating a serves one microwave meal. Every year, Patrick tells himself he is going to take Christmas Eve off, and he’s going to book a plane ticket back to Chicago, and he’s going to spend the holidays at his mom’s house, eating turkey and watching Christmas specials on TV. Every year, Patrick fails miserably, and buys his microwave meal, and eats it — alone — in the apartment, in his underwear. 

This is probably why Patrick doesn’t care about Christmas. Because he’s convinced himself it doesn’t matter to protect himself. He wears his apathy like a suit of armour because otherwise, he has to admit to himself that he’s lonely.

Patrick is so lonely it hurts. 

Patrick clears his throat. “Just thought I’d have a quiet one, you know. You?”

Across the room, Pete has stopped stacking chairs. He rests his arms against the nearest one and props his chin on his fist and he looks at Patrick with such gentle understanding that Patrick wants to cry. Even at a distance, his eyes tear into Patrick’s soul. 

“I mean,” Pete begins. “My mom always makes too much food. If you felt like it — and absolutely no pressure if you don’t, but if you _did_ — you’d be more than welcome to come along and join us. There’s always tons of people there, relatives and, like, partners and dad’s business friends who can’t fly home for Christmas. It’s fun! You’d — I think you’d really enjoy it. And my mom would love to meet you. I’ve told her all about you.”

Patrick shakes his head. “You don’t have to…” He pauses and takes a deep breath. “You don’t have to pretend we’re something more than we are. I don’t have to meet your family and you don’t have to feel bad about me spending Christmas alone. It’s fine. _I’m_ fine, really. I’m not your boyfriend, and—”

“What?” Pete interrupts, which is good because Patrick has a whole lot more ramble just waiting to leak out of his mouth. But, also? What does he mean, _what?_

“Uh…” Patrick says, and it’s like old times, reduced to repetitive vowel sounds by Pete. 

Pete moves from behind the chair and looks at Patrick carefully. “I _mean,_ what do you mean, you’re not my boyfriend?”

This strikes Patrick as a particularly stupid thing to say. “Well,” Patrick starts, blushing hideously. “It’s just — you’re totally hot. And I’m totally… not. And you’re smart and funny and so, so awesome, and I just thought…” Patrick stumbles to a helpless stop and looks at Pete desperately. “I mean, obviously we’re not to together. We’ve never been on a date.”

What happens next is confusing. Pete, without looking away, swings down two chairs and sets them around one of the little coffee shop tables with a flourish. He maintains aggressive eye contact as he moves behind the coffee bar and begins making two cups of steaming hot tea. He doesn’t look away as he brings them to the table and places them, opposite one another, with a significant raised eyebrow in Patrick’s direction. 

“Patrick Stump,” he says formally. “Would you like to get a cup of tea with me?”

And here, Patrick discovers that he is physically incapable of not saying stupid things. Here he is, faced with the most romantic gesture anyone has ever made for him and instead of saying thank you, like a normal person, Patrick opens his ridiculous mouth and bleats, “I only drink herbal tea.”

Pete rolls his unfairly attractive eyes and drops into a little bow. “This is lapsang souchong, my exacting little dictator,” he says, gesturing to the cups. “With a drizzle of honey and just a dust of cinnamon. If you step outside of your comfort zone for _one fucking minute,_ I’m pretty convinced you’ll enjoy it. Now. Have a cup of fucking tea with me, before I lock you in the stock room and leave you there to think about what you’ve done.”

Patrick takes a seat and, gingerly, he risks a sip. It is… _fantastic._ Different, of course, stronger and more vibrant and striking and breathtaking than any of the teabags he keeps in a caddy in the back room. The spice of the cinnamon cuts across the sweetness of the honey and the taste is deep and round and mellow and… This is a metaphor for Pete, he realises, slowly. This is a metaphor for everything that Pete stands for and everything Pete has done and Patrick is so incredibly stupid. He takes another greedy sip. He grins, delighted. “This is fucking good.”

“Right?” Pete says, smiling in a self-satisfied way. Then, he adds, “You know what your problem is, don’t you?”

God, Patrick has a _list_ of his problems. Where would Pete like him to start?

“Um,” Patrick says, hoping he can start small before he works up to the big stuff.

“Your problem,” Pete interrupts, “is that you think the world is a romance novel, even though you laugh at them.” 

That… is not how Patrick saw this conversation going. Patrick gapes at him. “What?”

“You do!” Pete insists. “You’re waiting for the maiden in the tall tower so you can ride to the rescue and you haven’t worked out that life isn’t like that. People are people, not characters in a novel, and sometimes life is just… small. It’s small and it’s comfortable and it’s meeting a cute guy in a bookshop, a guy with awesome taste in hats, and it’s falling in love quietly, without drama.”

Patrick blinks slowly and turns this over and over in his head. He examines it from every possible angle and he thinks it can’t possibly be that simple. Love is grand and overwhelming. Love is pain and misunderstanding. Love is… meeting a cute boy in a bookshop, a boy with terrible taste in shoes, and falling in love quietly, without drama. 

“Oh,” Patrick says. 

“Now, Patrick,” Pete says slowly. “We’ve been together almost constantly since the first night I started working here. We’ve been fucking for the past two weeks. I told you I love you. Why do you think we’re not together?”

“You did not!” Patrick explodes. Pete absolutely did not say that. That is the kind of thing Patrick would remember. 

“I did too,” Pete retorts, folding his arms. “I told you when we were walking back here after the Christmas party.”

Patrick squints. Like Godzilla rising from the fog, he remembers falling in front of a taxi cab and Pete’s eyes and Pete saying impossibly lovely things and Pete’s eyes and Pete refusing to kiss him and Pete’s eyes and Pete saying…

Patrick sucks in a breath. “Oh, _fuck,”_ he says. He risks a look at Pete from under his lashes. 

Pete grins. “Fuck, indeed.”

Patrick thinks about this for a moment. 

“Okay, so here’s the thing,” he begins. “I am… probably a horrible boyfriend. I don’t know, no one’s ever tried, really. But I’m grumpy, and I’m stubborn, and I’ll argue with you about basically anything, for no particular reason other than I enjoy being right.”

Pete cups his chin in his palms and flutters his eyelashes. “What a catch.”

“Shut up. I’m opinionated, and I’m rude when I’m tired — which is often — and I like things to be _just_ the way I like them. But, you…” and here, Patrick trails off for a moment and takes Pete’s hand across the table. “You make me feel like it’s worth compromising sometimes. You make me want to leave my apartment for things other than work. You are… exceptionally awesome. And, I suppose, what I’m saying is… if you can accept those flaws of mine, I can probably deal with your horrible fashion sense and the way you laugh at your own jokes and your awful taste in romance novels.”

“And I’ll love you for all of those things,” Pete promises. He raises Patrick’s hand to his mouth and kisses each of his knuckles gently in turn. “But I’ll also love you for how you look when you’re singing along to the radio while you do the stock take. And I’ll love you when you’re stealing the covers and snarling at me for waking you before nine, and when you insist that you only like herbal tea from Trader Joe’s.”

And Patrick nods, because when Pete describes him like that, with that fond smile tugging at the corners of his mouth, then Patrick doesn’t sound like a terrible option. So, when Pete leans back and unzips his hoodie and reveals Patrick’s NYU t-shirt underneath, loose and baggy and soft with wear around the collar — which feels a lot like a metaphor for _Patrick,_ now he’s thinking about it, well. All Patrick can do is laugh. 

“I hope you don’t mind,” Pete says, as Patrick scrambles over the table to get to him, and a tidal wave of hot tea crashes to the floor and no doubt starts to stain the hardwood. “I just thought it was a good fit. Does this mean you’re coming for dinner?”

“Oh, sweetheart, this means I’m coming _imminently,”_ Patrick says, getting a hand up Pete’s shirt to thumb over his nipples. 

Pete laughs into Pete’s mouth and kisses him deep and loving and enduring. Outside, the snow starts to swirl down once more, and it’s beginning to look a lot like the happiest holiday Patrick has ever had. And Patrick thinks Pete is his boyfriend and the love of his life and his _soulmate,_ most likely. 

And Patrick thinks, actually, he’s okay with that. 

_** Happy Holidays **_

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Holidays, everyone. I hope you have a wonderful time if you're celebrating, and a peaceful, stress-free time if you're not. That was 2019. Here's to 2020.


End file.
